


Dirt in the Machine

by bedlamsbard



Series: Oxygen and Rust [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Genderfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-22
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 14:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of the Clone Wars, Obi-Wan Kenobi and her Padawan are captured by Count Dooku, whose agenda may be entirely different from that of the mysterious Lord Sidious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because Star Wars is more fun with more ladies.

Right now, the only thing that Anakin Skywalker wants in the universe is a hot shower and a warm bed. He’s even willing to forego the shower if it gets him into bed quicker. They’re still a few klicks from Crimson Station, which means a few more klicks of trudging through twelve kinds of muck in pouring rain, which weighs down his robes and soaks through his clothes down to the bone. Even the clones’ armor isn’t white anymore, just a few patches showing through the mud that slicks over it like a second coat of paint. At least they’re well-camouflaged.

“Master,” he complains faintly, not really expecting Obi-Wan to hear him over the rain and the squelching sound of the marching troopers – no war machines here; they’d be even more useless than on Jabiim, “how much further?”

“As long as it takes, Anakin,” Obi-Wan replies, tired and distracted. She tugs her hood closer over her face, shadowing it completely, and tucks her hands into the sleeves of her robe. In the gloom she looks like nothing more than a slight brownish bulk, a little paler than the surrounding darkness. Sunset had been a few hours ago. Anakin doesn’t know what time it is now and can’t bring himself to care.

Just another couple of hours, he tells himself. Just another couple hours, and then they’ll be at Crimson Station, where they can fall into bed and let Master Unduli take over until they’re forced to rouse themselves from unconsciousness. Funny how everyone had claimed that this planet was firmly in the Republic’s grasp until the Separatists had turned up, firmly ensconced on the surface like they’d been here for years. Maybe they have. Maybe they’ve been being lied to all along and the Queen-Priestess isn’t as surprised as she’s been leading them all to believe. Maybe – 

“Or maybe the Separatists have fooled her as they’ve fooled us,” Obi-Wan murmurs, picking up the stray thought from the front of Anakin’s mind. “Mind your thoughts, my Padawan.”

“Yes, Master,” Anakin mutters. “Sorry, Master.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t reply, her own misery sunk deep into the Force around them despite her best intentions. Anakin think of a lot of things to say, but Obi-Wan clearly doesn’t want to talk and Anakin’s really too tired to have a real conversation. Just a few more hours, he tells himself. Just a few more hours, then they’ll be at Crimson Station and they can hand off their duties to Master Unduli and her Padawan.

He’s so obsessed with the thought that he almost misses the faint whisper in the Force that precludes a Sep attack.

“Master!” he cries, but Obi-Wan has felt it to and is already spinning around, her movement slowed by the thick mud. Her lightsaber blazes blue in her hand, raindrops sizzling into steam as they hit the blade; Anakin follows in the same heartbeat, teeth bared in a grimace as he squints into the darkness, reaching out with the Force to find the Sep forces before the shooting starts. He’s so tired; all he senses is a vast blankness and the warm, reassuring presence of Obi-Wan beside him.

The clones, alerted by his cry, are starting to spread out, moving into position a little slowly because of the mud. An ARC trooper is barking orders – Anakin thinks that it’s Cody, but he can’t actually tell, he’s too tired to expend the extra effort to tell one clone from another.

He realizes belatedly that they’ve walked into an ambush when the first rocket explodes in the middle of the column behind them. It sends them reeling backwards, clones flying everywhere and Anakin’s lightsaber extinguishing when he falls flat on his ass, and he shoves aside the sound of screaming to take in what the explosion has illuminated: they’ve walked into a canyon, and its steep walls are so thickly covered with droids that it looks like they’ve grown there. Blaster fire rains down on them as Anakin scrambles for his lightsaber, Obi-Wan deflecting the shots and cursing in a way that’s completely unfitting for a Jedi Knight as the clones start to return fire, medics shouting and pulling the wounded under what cover they can manage. A sharp whistle heralds the approach of a second rocket; Anakin thrusts out his ungloved hand and shoves with the Force, stopping the rocket in mid-air. It wiggles slightly, fighting him, and he bites his lip until he tastes blood, willing it slowly back as it reverses course – and then goes, flying back in the direction it came from. Droid parts erupt in the air as it explodes.

“Good job, Anakin,” Obi-Wan pants, parrying a blaster bolt.

“Any time, Master,” Anakin says, igniting his own lightsaber.

“Cody, get Blue Squad to cover our retreat!” Obi-Wan orders, the Force behind her words so that they carry. “Get the wounded out of here! We’ll bring up the rear –”

She flings her free hand out, sending two droidekas flying backwards amongst their fellows, her eyes nearly crossed in concentration as she deflects a third rocket. Anakin covers her, his lightsaber flashing before his eyes as he parries bolts.

“General, Commander, you ought to get out of here,” Cody says, settling in beside them with his blaster cradled lovingly in his arms. “We’ll cover you –”

“Cover the retreat, Cody,” Obi-Wan snaps. “That’s an order! Anakin and I will take care of this.”

“All right – hey! Get these clones out of here!” he shouts, waving his arm to get their attention. “Go, go, go!”

Anakin’s ears are ringing with the sound of blaster fire. If his hearing wasn’t already busted after a lifetime in close proximity to fast speeders and faster starfighters, much to his Master’s dismay, the war probably would have done it. As it is, he can barely hear Cody’s shouting over the din; the only reason he doesn’t miss Obi-Wan’s yell is because she grabs the back of his robe and yells in his ear, “Time to go, Anakin –”

His name ends in a wet, choked off sound as Obi-Wan stumbles backwards, dragging him down with her grip on his robe. “Master!” he cries, his lightsaber fallen forgotten into the mud.

They’re both so filthy that he can’t distinguish blood from mud, but he can feel her life flickering and fading in the Force as she gasps, bubbles of blood at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes are wide and blank, her hands clasping and unclasping weakly on his robe as Anakin bends over her, all coherent thought gone out of his mind except _no no no not again no_ –

It’s like his mother on Tatooine all over again, like Jabiim and Aargonar and a hundred other worlds where Jedi and clones have died gasping under his hands. Anakin presses his forehead against his master’s, his tears cutting tracks through the mud on his face, and grasps for the strands of the Force.

“Not this time,” he snarls. “Not this time – come on, Obi-Wan, stay with me, I’m going to save you –”

He knows how to heal, of course, all Jedi do, but he’s never been any good at it. A true Jedi healer could go in and take care of everything that’s damaged, stitch together torn tissue and muscle and broken bones with nothing but their mind, but all Anakin can do is think frantically _fix it_ and _shoves_ the Force into Obi-Wan, running one hand over the place on her torso where the worst damage seems to be.

Obi-Wan spasms, her back arching as she tries to scream, her blood gurgling in her throat. Anakin grips her close, words tumbling over his tongue as he begs her to stay with him, to live, because he can’t lose her too, not again, please.

He doesn’t see the combat droids until they’re practically on top of them.

“No –” Anakin protests, his lightsaber flying into his hand, but he doesn’t even make it to his feet before a droid smashes its rifle into the back of his skull and he falls face-down across Obi-Wan’s body, tasting blood and mud in the instant before unconsciousness comes.

*

 

When Anakin wakes up, he thinks, _Obi-Wan_ , and reaches out for her with his mind, panic increasing when he can’t find her. Using the Force feels like swimming through mud; he shoves with his mind, trying to find his way through, because his master has to be there somewhere – at last he finds her, though he can’t seem to focus long enough to tell her where she is or how badly she’s hurt, just that she’s alive.

Something’s weird about this, though. Anakin lets the Force carry him along, drifting in little waves and eddies through the bog of it. This isn’t normal, not for him. And – there are only a few life forms in his immediate vicinity. Lots of mechanicals – droids, mostly – but no clones, no other Jedi but him and Obi-Wan, and –

He sits bolt upright, his eyes flying open.

He’s sitting in a small room, all gray durasteel with diamond patterns on the floor and walls. His wrists are cuffed together in front of him; his robe and utility belt, with his lightsaber and comlink, are missing. He touches his fingers to the back of his head gingerly, wincing when he finds dried blood clotted in his filthy hair. He remembers the droid knocking him out with the butt of its rifle, which is a new one for him – the Separatists don’t take captives unless they can get something out of it. The droids should have blown him and Obi-Wan away, not that he’s complaining, except he doesn’t like mysteries and this is definitely one of them.

Anakin glances up. Air vent to his right, tucked against the ceiling – too small for a human to get through. Door directly in front of him. He hops off the hard cot and goes over to inspect, running his fingers over the wall beside it in hopes of finding a control panel, but as far as he can tell there isn’t one on this side of the room. It’s a cell, never meant to be opened from the inside. In the corner of the room opposite the air vent is what Anakin is pretty sure is a camera, though it’s no kind he’s ever seen before.

He waves his cuffed hands at it. “Hey, you! Whoever’s watching this! I want to see my master right now, or the fact that you’ve just kidnapped two Jedi is going to be the least of your problems.”

He really doesn’t want to think about the fact that the Jedi Council has probably written them off as dead, because who knows how long they’ve been here, but that’s not the important thing. The important thing is that he and Obi-Wan are both here, and as long as they’re together, then they can get out of this.

He shouts at the camera some more, mostly to relieve his own anxiety rather than because he thinks anyone’s going to respond, then goes and sits back down on the cot, wondering where the hell he is and what they’ve done with Obi-Wan. At least he knows that she’s alive, thanks to the Force, but he has no idea what condition she’s in or how badly injured she really is. It had felt bad, back on the planet, but now Anakin just can’t tell. At least she’s alive.

“It’s strange how we keep meeting like this, Skywalker.”

Anakin leaps up as the door slides open, revealing Count Dooku, elegant in black – almost a mockery of the Jedi uniform. Anakin glances at the lightsaber on his belt, then demands, “Where’s Obi-Wan?”

“If you were my Padawan, Skywalker, I would teach you patience,” Dooku says, sounding faintly annoyed. “And manners.”

“Where is Obi-Wan Kenobi?” Anakin repeats, ignoring him.

“Master Kenobi was badly injured in the ambush,” Dooku concedes, looking Anakin up and down as if he doesn’t like what he sees. That’s all right; Anakin isn’t too fond of the view either. “She is currently being treated for her injuries. My medical droids inform me that she ought to recover without permanent damage.”

“I want to see her.”

“She wouldn’t be aware of it,” Dooku says. “She’s in a bacta tank.”

“She’ll know,” Anakin says. His voice sounds cold to his ears; he clenches both fists, flesh and metal, wanting to wrap his fingers around Dooku’s throat.

“Your devotion to your young master is remarkable, Padawan,” Dooku says. He looks at Anakin again, his expression considering. “Very well. I shall permit you to see her, so long as you give me your parole not to attempt to escape or harm me. If you betray your word, I shall kill first Obi-Wan Kenobi, then you. Do I have your oath?”

Anakin hesitates, then nods, thinking of the horrible gasping sound Obi-Wan had made as she bled out in the mud and muck of the planet’s surface. “I give you my word as a Jedi.” He thrusts his hands out towards Dooku. “Take the cuffs off.”

“Not part of the bargain, I’m afraid,” Dooku says.

Anakin lets his hands drop. “I need to report to the Jedi Council.”

“Really,” Dooku says, sounding mildly entertained. “And why would I permit you to do that?”

“You’ve never taken captives before,” Anakin says cautiously. “So you must want something from us. If you’re going to ransom us or – or trade us, or something, you need to let the Republic know we’re alive, or they’ll think you’re lying. And it will go better if Obi-Wan or I tell them that, but since Obi-Wan can’t –”

“There’s one thing you haven’t considered, young Skywalker.”

“What’s that?”

“Perhaps I don’t want the Republic to know that you and Master Kenobi live,” Dooku says, and turns away, cape fluttering after him. Anakin follows him, glancing around and trying to memorize everything he sees, because the Republic might never get another chance like this to see the inside of Dooku’s command carrier up close. Of course, the importance of that is predicated on their eventually making it back to Republic territory, but Anakin is trying not to think about that right now.

Everywhere he looks there are droids. Some of them glance at him curiously, but most seem content to ignore him, focused on their duties. He has the uncomfortable feeling that besides him, Obi-Wan, and Dooku, there might not be another life form on the entire ship. He reaches out with the Force again, trying to find out for sure, but it’s the same as it had been before – like swimming through mud. He shakes his head, reaching up with his cuffed hands to pinch the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

“If you’re trying to use the Force, Skywalker, I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Count Dooku says over his shoulder.

“Why not?” Anakin demands.

“Because I’ve given you a drug that obstructs your ability to connect with the Force,” says Dooku. “It’s experimental, but preliminary reports have been promising. And I see it’s working.”

Anakin stops dead in the hallway, staring at him. “What?”

Dooku beckons him forward. “Don’t concern yourself overmuch. When the drug wears off, you should be able to interact with your midichlorians again.”

“Should be able to – who are you doing these experiments on, anyway?”

“That’s none of your concern. Come along, Skywalker. You do wish to see your master, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Anakin says, scowling at his back as he starts moving forward again. But Dooku’s wrong, he thinks distractedly. He can still feel the Force; it’s just more difficult than it usually is for him. But his midichlorian count is so high – maybe for an ordinary Jedi it’s like being blind and deaf.

He resists the urge to chew on a fingernail, which Obi-Wan has been trying to train him out of for years. Dooku leads him through the guts of the ship, past ranks of powered-down battle droids; Anakin doesn’t need the Force to tell him that the Sith Lord is showing off the power of the Confederacy. He resists the urge to shout at Count Dooku; he’s more than aware of what the Confederacy is capable of, he just wants to see Obi-Wan.

Dooku finally leads him into a room with a single bacta tank in the center of it. There’s a medical droid standing beside it, but Anakin doesn’t care about that, shoving forward into the room as Count Dooku steps aside. Stripped of her Jedi robes, the cloud of her red hair free of its usual elaborate braids, Obi-Wan looks smaller and younger, almost delicate as she floats in the bacta. The blaster wounds on her torso don’t look as bad as Anakin had feared, but it might just be the bacta obscuring them. He’s seen Obi-Wan naked or nearly naked enough times before; he doesn’t spare time looking at her bare legs or the curve of her breasts beneath the breast-band someone has modestly put her in.

“Give me that,” he demands, snatching the datapad from the medical droid’s hands and checking Obi-Wan’s vitals. Everything looks like it’s in order, he’s relieved to find as he scrolls through the report. Heartbeat steady, lost blood replaced – he’s not going to ask from where, since it doesn’t exactly look like there are a lot of donors lined up – wounds clean of infection, everything looks good. She’s been in the bacta for almost twenty-four hours already; the estimate for full recovery is another eighteen before she should be moved to a bed. Anakin runs down the list of administered drugs, trying to find the unfamiliar Force-blocker that Dooku had given him. If Obi-Wan can’t use the Force, it will take her twice as long to heal, maybe more. If Dooku had given it to her, it’s not there.

“Content, young Skywalker?” Dooku inquires.

Anakin hands the datapad back to the droid and flattens his palms against the glass, looking up at Obi-Wan as he reaches out with the Force. Knowing what’s blocking him doesn’t make it any easier, but this close he can feel Obi-Wan’s life force, strong and steady and familiar.

“I want to stay with her,” he says, not looking back at Dooku.

“You make an unusual number of demands for a Padawan,” Count Dooku observes.

“I gave you my parole,” Anakin insists. “Obi-Wan’s wounded, it’s not like she’s going anywhere, and I won’t go anywhere without her, anyway. She’s my master. It’s my duty to stay with her.”

“So devoted, even for a Padawan,” says the count. “No. You may give your report to the Jedi Council, then you will be escorted back to your cell. Once Master Kenobi has been removed from the bacta, I will reconsider your request.”

“But –” Anakin protests automatically, then stops, blinking. “You’re going to let me talk to the Council? Why?”

“Perhaps you made a compelling argument, young Skywalker. Perhaps I am merely curious to see how my old master responds to this unique situation of yours.” He makes an impatient gesture towards Anakin.

Obi-Wan’s face is so calm, so still in the murky bacta liquid. Anakin lingers as long as he can, then drags himself away from the tank and follows Dooku back into the hallway, glancing over his shoulder at his master. Why? Why save two of the Republic’s heroes, then give Obi-Wan Kenobi medical treatment for the wounds she’d sustained at the hands of Dooku’s own forces? None of it makes any sense; Anakin has no idea what Dooku thinks he can get from them. He wonders if he dares ask.

Dooku doesn’t take him all the way up to the bridge, just takes him into another small room with a holocom in it. Anakin programs the Council’s information into it, wondering if this is some kind of a trick, and steps up onto the platform, grinning in relief when Master Yoda’s and Master Windu’s figures flicker into sight in front of him.

“Skywalker!” says Windu, sounding relieved as Anakin makes his formal bow. “Where are you? Master Unduli reported that you and Obi-Wan had never made it to Crimson Station and your clone commander reported you lost.”

“Yes, Masters,” Anakin says, apology creeping into his voice. “We – we’ve been captured by Count Dooku. Master Obi-Wan was badly injured in the ambush, I was knocked unconscious, and Dooku brought us here and treated us. I’ve seen Obi-Wan; she’s in a bacta tank right now, but it looks like she’ll be all right.”

“An aggressive move this is,” Master Yoda says. “There with you, Count Dooku is?”

Dooku steps on the platform besides Anakin. “I am here, my old master.”

“We require the immediate return of Master Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker,” Windu informs him. He and Master Yoda exchange an unreadable look, then Windu grimaces and goes on, “Name your ransom.”

“I don’t intend to ransom them,” says Dooku.

“Then what do you want?” Anakin says bitterly. “If you think you can recruit Obi-Wan, you’re wrong, she’ll never turn to the Dark Side –”

“I have always been of the opinion that Padawans should be seen and not heard,” Dooku muses. “You’ve given your report to the Council. Guards, escort young Skywalker back to his cell.”

“Wait!” Anakin protests as four battle droids step forward. “I –”

“Stay with Obi-Wan, Anakin,” Windu orders. “We will inform the Supreme Chancellor immediately –”

“No,” Dooku snaps. “This is a Jedi matter. If Palpatine hears of this, both Kenobi and Skywalker will die.”

“What?” Anakin says, but two of the droids have seized his elbows and are frog-marching him out of the room. He twists to look over his shoulder, trying to hear what Windu and Yoda are saying, but the door slides shut behind him. He stops fighting the droids as soon as it does and they loosen their grips – they must have been ordered not to be too harsh with him. They settle into formation around him on the way back to his cell, where they deposit him and lock the door behind him.

Anakin drops down onto the bed and broods in his misery, trying to remind himself that the grim figure of Obi-Wan in the bacta tank is a good thing, even though it doesn’t feel that way. Under normal circumstances he’d be more troubled by what Dooku had meant when he ordered Master Windu and Master Yoda not to tell the Supreme Chancellor of their captivity, but worry for his master is consuming him now, so that he can barely think of anything else. He knows that Dooku had tried to recruit Obi-Wan once before, but Dooku has to know that Obi-Wan will never leave the Jedi. The Order is her life, in a way that it will never be Anakin’s no matter how hard he tries to make it be. And if Dooku had only wanted Obi-Wan, then why bring Anakin as well? Why go ahead and let him report to the Jedi Council?

None of it makes any sense. Anakin flops back on the bed, which isn’t particularly comfortable, but is a lot better than most of the places he’s been sleeping lately, and stares up at the ceiling. He misses the Force like he misses his right hand, like he misses Obi-Wan and Padmé. Whatever Dooku’s been experimenting with, it definitely works. He ought to have told the Council –

The Jedi will come for them. The Jedi will come for them, because they’ll never leave any of their own behind, and if they don’t come in time, then Anakin and Obi-Wan will find a way out of this on their own, because that’s what they do. Even if he isn’t certain about anything else, Anakin is certain of that.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Dogstar for talking this through with me!

Obi-Wan feels like she’s floating. It’s a peculiarly weightless feeling, like the time that she and Anakin had gone cloud-surfing on Ifgar III – colorless mists all around them, no solid ground, no sky, nothing at all but them, and the mists, and the Force.

This time she can’t feel the Force.

The realization makes her panic, her mind opening up as she shoves mentally outwards, grasping frantically for the familiar threads of the Force and finding herself blocked every time, like running face first into an energy wall, like standing frozen in horror in the Palace of Theed as her entire world came crashing down around her ears. Obi-Wan opens her mouth to scream, the way she’d screamed when Qui-Gon died, and opens her eyes to a plain metal ceiling above her.

Obi-Wan blinks.

She raises her head slightly, looking from side to side. She’s in a small room, an empty bacta tank standing abandoned to her left. Anakin is sitting on her other side, leaning on her bed with his head pillowed on his arms, snoring slightly – a soft, familiar sound. Obi-Wan raises her hand to touch his hair and his drawn short by a jerk and a soft click of metal on metal. She looks to see what’s stopped her, puzzled, and is surprised to find herself handcuffed to the bed.

“This isn’t a Republic med center,” she says out loud.

“Master!” Anakin jerks upright, his eyes wide. “You’re awake!”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says slowly, sitting up and trying not to wince. Anakin puts his cuffed hands out to help her, looking at her with worried eyes. “Where are we?”

“We – we’re on Count Dooku’s command cruiser,” he explains, faintly shame-faced. “We were captured in the ambush – you were badly wounded, and they took me by surprise while I was trying to help you. Dooku’s given you medical treatment,” he adds, like that’s any kind of reassurance. “You came out of a bacta tank a few hours ago.”

Obi-Wan touches her free hand to her torso, where she can remember, like a bad dream, blaster bolts ripping through her, searing through flesh and muscle and taking her life’s blood with them. Through the crinkly hospital gown she’s wearing she can feel layers of bandage. “Why? Dooku has no love for Jedi.”

“I think he’s…recruiting,” Anakin says reluctantly, looking as revolted by the idea as Obi-Wan feels. “He let me contact the Jedi Council for a couple of minutes, and he said that he didn’t want to ransom us, and that if the Council told the Supreme Chancellor, he’d kill us both, that this was a Jedi matter. And you know he’s always been kind of obsessed with you because of Master Qui-Gon –”

“I am aware,” Obi-Wan says. “How long has it been?”

“I think – two days?” Anakin says. “I was knocked out, and when I came to I was here. You were in the bacta tank for thirty-two hours; they let me out of my cell and locked me in here with you when they took you out of it.”

“But the Council knows we’re here,” Obi-Wan mutters. She runs her free hand through her hair, loose around her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

He nods. “Just a knock on the head, and Dooku’s drugs – he’s got something that blocks Force ability.”

That explains her nightmare. “A mask?” Obi-Wan questions. “Like what Ventress used –”

“No, some kind of drug. They’ve stuck me with it twice already. You too, I think.”

Obi-Wan winces; she’s never liked needles. She looks at the IV in her arm. “Take this out,” she orders.

“Uh, Master, I don’t think –”

“Take it out!” Softer, she adds, “I don’t know what it is.”

“I think it’s a painkiller,” Anakin offers, but he reaches for it anyway, graceful despite his bonds. Obi-Wan glances away so that she doesn’t have to see the needle come out of her skin, bracing herself for the prick of pain, but it never comes; the door slides open and Anakin shifts, moving into a defensive posture as Count Dooku enters the room.

“Ah, Master Kenobi,” he says. “How good of you to join us. How are you feeling?”

“A bit puzzled,” Obi-Wan says. “My Padawan tells me you don’t intend to ransom us back to the Republic and that you instructed the Jedi Council not to inform the Supreme Chancellor of our captivity. Might I ask why?”

“For a very good reason,” says Count Dooku. “Do you remember what I told you back on Geonosis?”

Obi-Wan meets his eyes. “About what Qui-Gon Jinn might have done when presented with your offer?”

“That as well, but I was thinking of something else.” His gaze is as sharp as any Jedi’s.

“You said that a Sith Lord controlled the Senate,” Obi-Wan says, allowing herself to frown a little as she works out the implications in her head. “We have had no evidence of this accusation –”

“It is the truth,” Count Dooku says.

“So in order to convince the Council of this, you kidnapped two Jedi and threatened to kill us if we warned the Senate – and the spy?” Obi-Wan sniffs. “Somehow I doubt your sincerity, Count.”

“I have no doubt of that, Master Kenobi. I have no love for the Jedi, and the Jedi have no love for me.”

“You say that like it’s a surprise. All the people you killed? I knew them!” Anakin snaps, bouncing on the balls of his feet, moving a little to put himself between Dooku and Obi-Wan. “What do you want with us?”

“With you, Skywalker? Nothing. With your master, now –”

“You can’t have her!” Anakin says, alarm in his voice. He shifts again as Count Dooku moves, his gaze steady on Obi-Wan’s.

She looks back at him. “I told you once before, Count Dooku: I will not join you. I am a Jedi.”

“So was I once,” he says. “There are many things that will tempt a Jedi to the Dark Side, Master Kenobi. Ambition – grief – anger – love.” He puts his hand out, not touching Anakin, and closes his fist.

Anakin gasps, his hands flying to his throat as he struggles with an invisible grip. Obi-Wan starts forward, the cuff on her wrist jerking her to a sudden halt. “What are you doing?” she demands, grabbing for the Force to help her and finding herself blocked: the energy walls all over again, and she feels a sudden, deafening fear that her nightmare hadn’t been one at all, but precognition. The Jedi gift that she has always hated. “Let him go!”

Anakin claws his bound hands at thin air, his face turning slowly purple as he fights for air. “Master,” he gasps out, the word tearing at the air between him, a ragged edge to the vowels. Obi-Wan yanks at the cuff, frantic to get to him, but she’s only human: without the Force, she doesn’t have the strength to break it.

Dooku watches Anakin with a thoughtful expression on his face. “It’s strange, isn’t it?” he says. “That the Code places such importance on a Jedi’s lack of attachment, yet at the same time, the Council fosters the relationship between Master and Padawan. You know what it’s like to lose your Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You tasted the Dark Side then. What will you do if you lose your Padawan as well?”

“Anakin isn’t a part of this!” Obi-Wan exclaims, forcing back the fear, the rage, with her greatest effort and not quite succeeding. Something hums in the swift beating of her pulse, something even deeper than her connection with the Force, something that whispers _Anakin Anakin Anakin_. “If this is between us, Dooku –”

“You survived one great loss, Master Kenobi,” says Dooku, ignoring her as she pulls at her handcuff, the metal clanking against the arm of her hospital bed. “Yet so many Jedi have, especially since this war began. I like to think that I know you better than you might believe. Killing Skywalker won’t turn you to the Dark Side. The reverse might be true, but I am not my master; I have very little interest in the boy.” He opens his hand, and Anakin collapses to the floor, clutching at his throat and gasping. He pushes himself up slowly, glaring bloody murder at Dooku.

“You –” he spits, his voice hoarse and ragged.

“Anakin, peace!” Obi-Wan demands of him, and sees his mouth form protest before he submits, kneeling on the floor with his hands still pressed to his throat, where bruises are forming on the pale skin. Obi-Wan Kenobi raises her chin, drawing her dignity around her in lieu of the Force, and meets Count Dooku’s eyes. “What do you want from us, Count?”

The Sith Lord seems satisfied by her response. “A matter that we may discuss at a later point,” he says. “I will send a droid with a change of clothes – your own were quite ruined, I’m afraid – and you and your apprentice may join me at dinner.”

“I’m a bit tied up at the moment,” Obi-Wan makes herself say, holding up her cuffed hand. “I don’t suppose you’d be so kind?”

Dooku makes a motion with his hand and the cuff clicks open. Obi-Wan pulls her hand free immediately, glancing down at the ring on her wrist where the cuff has scraped it raw in the few minutes since Dooku started choking Anakin. “My thanks.”

He inclines his head slightly in acknowledgment, then turns and leaves, the door closing and locking behind him. Obi-Wan slides out of the bed and hurries to Anakin, kneeling down beside him and putting her arm around him. He leans against her immediately, his whole body stiff with shock.

“He tried to kill me!” he croaks.

“No,” Obi-Wan says. “He wanted to show us that he could.”

Anakin shudders and presses his face against her neck, his breathing still with that awful, ugly edge in it. Obi-Wan touches the back of his head, her fingers unerringly finding the spot where his fine hair is still matted with dried blood. He flinches a little and she pulls away quickly, though Anakin doesn’t release his grip on her.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m _annoyed_ ,” he says, sitting back. “Sorry, Master – I know that’s not very Jedi-like of me.”

“I suspect even Master Yoda has been annoyed on occasion,” Obi-Wan says, rubbing her wrist.

“I think Master Windu is annoyed all the time, at least judging by the expression on his face,” Anakin confesses. He leans his head against her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re all right, Master. I didn’t like thinking that I might be all alone here with Count Dooku and the clankers, or that I’d have to figure out some way to haul you out of a bacta tank and onto some kind of escape pod.”

“I have every faith in you, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says.

He twists to look at her. “Not that I would have left you behind, Master. You know I wouldn’t –”

“I know, Anakin,” she tells him gently. “You’ve done well in a difficult situation.”

He beams tiredly at her. “Anything for you, Master. You know that.”

Obi-Wan is saved from formulating a response to this extraordinary statement by the arrival of a droid carrying a pile of clothing and, more importantly, the key to Anakin’s binders. He seizes on this with an expression of great relief, while Obi-Wan thanks the droid and inspects the clothes. Not her clothes, or anything she’d wear under normal circumstances: tight dark pants, with a pale purple tunic beneath a deep violet leather jerkin with pearl buttons on the collar and cuffs. Anakin gives her a deeply appreciative look as she sits down on the edge of the hospital bed to pull on the matching boots, wincing as the movement pulls at her bandaged wounds. He grins at her in apology when she raises an eyebrow, then holds out a hairbrush.

Obi-Wan drags it through her hair, which she then separates out into four sections, braiding each of them and wrapping two around the crown of her head, then coiling the others around each other in a figure eight at the nape of her neck and pinning them into place. Anakin watches her silently, handing her pin after pin until everything seems secure.

“Do you think those are Ventress’ clothes?” Anakin says, sitting down on the bed beside her as they wait for the droid to come back. He looks revolted by the idea.

Obi-Wan, who hasn’t considered this, rather feels likewise. “I don’t believe so,” she says after a moment. “Asajj Ventress is taller than I am, and this fits too well.”

“Like he had it tailored for you?” Anakin says, even more revolted. “That’s really creepy. You look pretty, though.”

“Thanks,” she says dryly. “I’m so glad you think so.”

He chews absently on a fingernail, his sleeve falling back to reveal the redness on his wrist where the handcuff had been. “I need to tell you something, Master,” he decides eventually.

Obi-Wan looks at him quickly, wondering what else Dooku has done. “What is it? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he says, then grins a little, almost shy. “You know that drug that Dooku’s been giving us, the one that inhibits use of the Force?”

“Are you saying it doesn’t work on you?” Obi-Wan demands. Anakin’s midichlorian count is so high that she supposes it’s just possible.

“No, it definitely works,” Anakin says quickly. “It just doesn’t work…all the way. I can still feel the Force, but not enough to do anything. I can sense you, and Dooku, and I could probably take apart the ship’s engine if I could get at it, but that’s about it. I can’t manipulate it.”

“That could be useful,” Obi-Wan says. “I’m afraid I have no connection with the Force at all at the moment. It’s quite disconcerting.”

Anakin winces, probably not even aware he’s doing it. “We’ll fix it, Master. It can’t be permanent. Dooku’s obsessed with you; he’d never do anything to screw up his favorite Jedi permanently.”

“What an awful thought,” Obi-Wan says distastefully. “I do hope he’s prepared to be disappointed.”

“I hope so. You’d make a really scary Sith.”

Both of them stand up as the door slides open again, revealing the same droid that had brought her the clothes earlier. “Count Dooku will see you now,” it announces. “Please follow me.”

“Well, it’s not like we have any other plans,” Anakin says, falling into step beside Obi-Wan as they follow the droid out into the hall.

This isn’t the first time that Obi-Wan has been on a ship run mostly or entirely by droids, but it’s as discomfiting as ever, even without the Force to whisper in her ear that something is wrong, something is very wrong, they shouldn’t be this far out in deep space without another living being somewhere around them. She rubs her hand over the back of her neck, wondering if it bothers Anakin as much as it does her. It’s entirely possible that he doesn’t even notice; sometimes she thinks that he likes droids more than he likes people. Not that Obi-Wan can always blame him.

“You know, I gave Dooku my parole,” Anakin mutters suddenly to her. “It was the only way he’d let me see you. Should I not have done that?”

“It’s all right,” Obi-Wan murmurs back. “Dooku used to be a Jedi. He won’t expect you to keep your word.”

For all the much-vaunted honor of the Jedi, there’s only one code they keep to, and it has nothing in it about telling the truth or keeping one’s word. Obi-Wan doesn’t like to go that far if she can help it, but if there’s one thing that Obi-Wan has learned in this war, it’s that there’s no such thing as honor. There is only what needs to be done for the Order and the Republic. She hopes that Anakin has grown to learn this as well.

The droid shows them into what Obi-Wan guesses is normally Dooku’s office, though now his desk is tucked against the window – currently deep in hyperspace, she observes – and a square table has been placed in the center of the room, with Dooku waiting at one end and places set for three. He seems pleased to see them.

“Colors flatter you, Master Kenobi. I would give you more compliments if I thought you would appreciate them, but I have no doubt that Qui-Gon Jinn taught you better. He was, like you are, a true Jedi.”

“You’re not fit to speak his name,” Obi-Wan says, with a faint pang. “I’m glad he didn’t live to see what became of his former master – that you would join with the very people who murdered him.”

“Come, come, Master Kenobi. I’ve seen the security holos; Qui-Gon died fighting and he died well. It is a pity; I would very much like him to be here today.”

“I don’t have to listen to this filth,” Obi-Wan says, the old anger threatening to boil up inside her. It’s not at all fitting for a Jedi Knight, and she does her best to shove it down. “If all you’re going to do is slander Qui-Gon’s name, then I believe I’d prefer to be returned to my cell.”

Anakin mutters a grumpy affirmative, glaring at Dooku.

The Sith Lord’s smile turns chilly. “Let’s make a bargain, you and I, Master Kenobi. If you try to escape –”

“You’ll have me killed?” Obi-Wan says archly, raising one eyebrow. “I do not fear death, Count.”

“You’re far too valuable to kill,” Dooku says. “No. If you try to escape, I’ll kill your Padawan. And if you try anything, young Skywalker –”

“You won’t kill Obi-Wan,” Anakin challenges. “You just said that.”

“Indeed. If you try anything, what happens to Master Kenobi will not be pleasant for either of you. I recommend that you don’t attempt to find out.”

Anakin bites the inside of his cheek, glaring silently at Dooku as he takes a step closer to Obi-Wan. She gives him her most reassuring look, wishing she could encourage him with the Force. “Qui-Gon would be so pleased, I’m sure,” she tells Dooku instead.

“Don’t be impertinent, Master Kenobi, it doesn’t suit you,” he says, sounding bored. “Do we have a bargain?”

“Very well,” Obi-Wan says reluctantly. “Anakin?”

He jerks his head in something that’s probably meant to be a nod, glaring bloody murder.

They sit at Dooku’s invitation, Obi-Wan ignoring the way the back of her neck prickles when she’s near him and concentrating on the food instead, which is brought out by a protocol droid and is, indeed, quite good. Anakin stabs at it with his fork like he’s intent on doing it serious physical damage. Under other circumstances Obi-Wan might correct him, but she can’t bring herself to do so, not with Dooku staring down at them. Obi-Wan is a Jedi; separating body from mind is her specialty. She cleans her plate, her body desperate for solid nourishment after almost two days in a bacta tank.

“What do you want with us, Count Dooku?” she says over her second glass of wine. “You’ve already said that you don’t plan on ransoming us back to the Republic. So far you’ve given me medical treatment, blocked our use of the Force, tortured my Padawan, allowed him to contact the Council but forbidden them from informing the Supreme Chancellor, and threatened to kill or torture us. I must admit that I’m a bit confused.”

“With Skywalker? Nothing. His only significance is to you, not me.”

Anakin glowers silently at him.

“What do you want with me, then?” Obi-Wan rephrases, wishing she had the Force to guide her questions. “Your droids have made a fairly good try at killing me over the past year and a half; do you really expect me to believe that you’ve had a sudden and sincere change of heart?”

“Call it a change of perspective, if you prefer,” Dooku says, tilting his head to look at her. His gaze is direct and piercing, with the power of the Force behind it; Obi-Wan realizes suddenly why non-Force sensitive beings are told never to look a Jedi in the eye. Every instinct she has is screaming at her to meet his gaze, to hold it, but without the Force behind her it would be a very bad idea. She holds it as long as she can, then lets her own gaze flicker slightly away from his, breaking the connection.

“You once taught a course at the Jedi Temple on the history of the Sith,” Dooku observes.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan allows cautiously.

“What a thrill it must have been for all those young Padawans to stand in the same room as the only Jedi in a millennium to kill a Sith Lord. Surely you, of all people, know what has always been true of the Sith.”

Anakin answers before Obi-Wan can. “Two,” he says. “There are always two, a master and an apprentice. It’s a perversion of the Jedi,” he adds, his scowl deepening.

“The Council investigates your claims of a second Sith Lord hiding in the Senate,” Obi-Wan says. “There is no evidence of this. You were wasting our time, Count. We are Jedi, not fools.”

“I find your lack of faith disturbing, Master Kenobi,” Dooku says mildly. “There is a second Sith, as it happens. As there always is.”

“Your apprentice?” Obi-Wan questions. “Someone you tricked into replacing the one who murdered Qui-Gon on Naboo – the one I killed?”

“My master,” Dooku replies. “The one who intends to replace me with a new apprentice, someone more…pliable.” His gaze drifts across the table to Anakin. “Someone young, someone whom he can easily control. My master knows the ways of the Sith well, but this blinds him to their flaws.”

“Apparently it blinds him to more than that!” Anakin snaps. “The Sith are evil. Look at this war – look in a mirror,” he sneers.

“Control your padawan, Master Kenobi, or I will,” Dooku tells Obi-Wan, raising an eyebrow.

She clenches her fist beneath the table, not liking be told how to train her own padawan even by the Jedi Council, let alone by a Sith traitor, but fear of what Dooku might do if Anakin can’t hold his tongue wins out over pride. “Anakin,” she says softly, nudging his ankle with her toe.

He sets his jaw. “I’m not afraid of you,” he tells Dooku.

“Just remember,” Dooku says, “it’s not yourself whom you should fear for.”

Anakin glances at Obi-Wan, his face creasing into worry. She closes her eyes briefly – he shouldn’t be worried about her, that’s for her to do for him – and looks back at Dooku. “Your point, Count.”

“My master has been very beneficial to me in the past. To the war, though his efforts have been…divided, to say the least. His usefulness has passed.”

“So you want the Jedi Council to remove him so that you may have a free hand,” Obi-Wan interprets.

“The Jedi want the second Sith gone,” Dooku says, “and so do I. We have something in common, Master Kenobi.”

“And in return?”

“The Senate treats with the Confederacy. Peacefully, no tricks.”

“I know a senator or two who might be persuaded,” Obi-Wan allows reluctantly. “But you understand that the Council will never allow a Sith Lord to control a significant portion of the galaxy. It is against everything the Jedi stand for.”

“Leave that to me.”

This is too easy. “Tell me the name and allow me to contact the Council,” Obi-Wan says. “I fear that I do not have the authority to speak for something this important on my own.”

“Master Kenobi,” Count Dooku says, “there is one more thing I want in return. You know what it is.”

Obi-Wan’s entire body stiffens. “No,” she says. “I will never join you, Dooku. I am a Jedi. My loyalty is to the Order and the Republic and I can be neither bought not bargained for.”

“Can’t you?” Dooku says. He flicks his fingers at the door behind them, which slides open obediently. Two battle droids enter.

Anakin and Obi-Wan both rise in one smooth movement, mirrors of each other. “ _Dooku_ ,” Anakin spits, like the name itself is a curse.

“Take Master Skywalker back to the med room,” he orders. “And give him his medicine.”

“Roger roger,” the lead droid says, reaching for Anakin’s arm. He shrugs it aside, glaring bloody murder at Dooku.

“I won’t leave Master Obi-Wan,” he snaps. “Whatever you’re going to say to her, you’ll say it in front of me.”

“No, I won’t,” Dooku says. “He is quite loyal, isn’t he?” he adds to Obi-Wan. “Remind him that if he refuses to cooperate, the results will not be pleasant for either of you.”

Anakin glances at Obi-Wan. “I’ll go,” he says quickly. “But if you hurt her, I’ll kill you. I swear I’ll kill you.”

Dooku doesn’t respond to the bait, just nods at the droids, who herd Anakin out of the room. He glances back at Obi-Wan, his expression anxious before the door closes between them. She clenches her hands on the edge of the table, her heart pounding in her throat.

“He isn’t a very good Jedi, is he,” Dooku observes.

“He’s young,” Obi-Wan says smoothly, straightening up and clasping her hands behind her back. “He still has much to learn.” 

“But do you have anything more to teach him?” He stands up, looking at her steadily with the Force behind his dark gaze as he moves around the edge of the table. “You aren’t a very good Jedi either, Obi-Wan Kenobi. It isn’t your fault, of course. You were too young to become a Knight, too inexperienced to go from being a Padawan to having one yourself.”

“I was old enough. There have been many Jedi who were made Knights much younger than I,” Obi-Wan says. “Anakin has only been in the Order for eleven years. He has time – if this war gives it to him.”

“Qui-Gon failed you, Master Kenobi. The Jedi Order has failed you. You and your Padawan feel too much – too deeply. The Jedi have made you believe that this is a weakness, but they are wrong. It is a strength! Think of what you could be without them –”

“I am a Jedi Knight,” Obi-Wan says flatly. “All that I desire is the continued safety and wellbeing of the Republic – which _you_ , by the way, threaten. I have no use for a man who turns his back on the principles that he swore to uphold – or for a man who doesn’t have any.”

“And when this war is over, the Jedi Order will have no use for a Master and a Padawan who violate one of their central tenets,” Dooku says. “But I will.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Obi-Wan says, but a slight shiver of foreboding runs down her spine.

Dooku steps close to her, running his hand down her arm. Obi-Wan is a Jedi; she keeps herself from shuddering or flinching away, but she can’t hide the tension in her body. “I’ve been watching you and Skywalker on the HoloNet for months now,” says Dooku. “If the Jedi haven’t seen it by now, then they’re even more foolish than I believed. When this war ends, you and he will both be drummed out of the Order.”

“Your eyes have betrayed you, Count,” Obi-Wan says, turning her head to watch him. “Neither Anakin nor I have ever betrayed the Code.”

“Not in body,” Dooku says. “Not yet. But you will never be the Jedi that you wish to be: you will give in to your emotions.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Obi-Wan repeats.

“Your Padawan is in love with you,” Dooku says and smiles, a self-satisfied little smirk that makes Obi-Wan’s blood run cold, “and you return it.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dooku’s magnaguards deposit Obi-Wan back in the med room, holding her still so that the medical droid give her a shot of something that makes her nerve endings tingle, her mind sliding away from the familiar pathways of the Force as they seem to ice over, numbed by the drug. While they’ve been at dinner another cot has been moved in; Anakin had been sitting cross-legged on it, fiddling with a small droid of uncertain origin, but he leaps up when he sees her, scattering droid parts all over the floor.

“Are you all right, Master?” he demands, hovering until the medical droid has followed the magnaguards back out into the hallway, the door locking behind them. “What did he do to you?”

“Nothing,” Obi-Wan says, sitting down on the side of the hospital bed to pull off her boots. She feels tired and a little ill, whatever painkillers they’d pumped her with starting to wear off so that her entire torso is starting to throb. She sheds the jerkin and pulls the undershirt off over her head, trying not wince as she does so, then starts to unpeel the layers of bandage wrapped around her torso.

Anakin comes over to stand in front of her. “Master, I don’t think –”

“I need to see it,” Obi-Wan says. “I can’t tell how bad it is.”

“It’s bad,” he insists. “Just believe me, okay? On a Republic cruiser they’d probably put you back in a bacta tank, but I told Dooku that you wouldn’t want that – to be helpless like that.”

“Thank you, you’re correct,” Obi-Wan says, because Anakin knows her far too well. “I do trust you, Anakin. I would just be more comfortable if I saw it for myself.”

“Then at least let me do that,” he says, reaching for the roll of bandage before she can agree. Obi-Wan relinquishes it, folding her hands in her lap. Anakin’s lightsaber-callused hands are quick and familiar, a light press against her skin. Obi-Wan doesn’t need the Force to guide her as she reaches for peace, letting her breathing even out so that she doesn’t flinch even when Anakin reaches the final layer of bandage, murmuring an apology as he peels it back from the wounds.

“I’m sorry, Master,” he says glumly, as Obi-Wan cranes her neck to see. “I should have been faster.”

“It’s not your fault, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, while Anakin grips the roll of used bandage and looks distressed. She looks down and rather wishes she hadn’t, counting four distinct blaster wounds on her torso. At least one of them should have broken her spine. A fifth shot had punched through the muscle on her left upper arm, which would explain the stiffness. A sixth had grazed her right thigh; a few inches to the left and it would have pierced her femoral artery. Well, she’s a Jedi Knight; she’s never even considered a life without scars.

“I’ll find some fresh bandages,” Anakin says suddenly, discarding the old ones and bouncing up to go inspect the row of cabinets alongside the back wall. Obi-Wan has no doubt that he’s already been through them – no doubt where he found the droid he was taking apart – and he comes back in less than a minute, bandages preceded by the familiar smell of bacta.

“Hold still, Master,” Anakin says, settling on the bed beside her, and Obi-Wan does. There isn’t anything special about this, because they’ve bandaged each other up a truly distressing number of times in the past. Somehow it feels different now, her skin sensitive to her Padawan’s touch as he presses bandage after bandage carefully against her stomach, to the wound below her right breast, to the wound that should have crippled her. She shivers a little, and Anakin looks up quickly. “Am I hurting you?”

“No, I’m quite all right,” Obi-Wan says. “The painkillers are wearing off, is all.”

Anakin chews on his lower lip, his face drawn tight with concentration as he places the last bandage. “They should have given you more.”

“I wasn’t about to ask,” Obi-Wan says, prodding the bandages gingerly. “Thank you, Anakin.” 

He settles back, one leg drawn up in front of him, the other dangling off the side of the bed. “What did Count Dooku say to you, Master?”

Obi-Wan pulls the undershirt back on, slowly so that she doesn’t strain anything. “Nothing important,” she says.

Anakin stares at her, silent and stubborn, the unused bandages balanced on his knee. Not for the first time, Obi-Wan feels the familiar flare of anger at Qui-Gon for being so inconsiderate as to get himself murdered by a Sith Lord, leaving her saddled with a precocious Force-sensitive boy who had really been too old to join the Order and who has grown up into a still precocious Padawan whom Obi-Wan would prefer to have at her side over every other Jedi in the Order, up to and including Master Yoda and Master Windu.

“He doesn’t have anything on you, Master,” Anakin says, confident in his ignorance. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve got anything to –”

“He said you’re in love with me,” Obi-Wan says.

The reason they never get sent on undercover missions is because, while Obi-Wan enjoys lying in both her personal and professional life (which are usually the same thing), Anakin can’t tell a falsehood to save his life. He can keep secrets, which Obi-Wan allows because her Padawan enjoys the illusion of privacy, but she’s never known him to lie to her with a straight face, if he can do it at all.

This time is no different. Anakin’s eyes go huge and horrified, every emotion he’s ever had naked on his face. His mouth opens and closes three times before he manages to squeak out, “Master – Obi-Wan – I –”

“I already knew,” Obi-Wan says, keeping her hands folded in her lap. She hurts; the bacta bandages are helping, but a day and a half in a bacta tank and a few bandages doesn’t make up for half a dozen blaster wounds that should have killed her. She isn’t used to healing without the Force to help her. The pain isn’t really helping.

Anakin looks slightly green, but he rallies himself to say, “I am in love with you, Obi-Wan. I have been for years. You’re a – we’re Jedi. I know it’s not…proper.” He meets her eyes with the same straightforward challenge with which he climbs into his starfighter, his mouth settling into stubbornness.

Qui-Gon had never really prepared her to train a Padawan. He’d certainly never prepared her for having this conversation. She doesn’t even have the Force to guide her, which would probably be the only advice Qui-Gon might have given her.

She swallows, wishing they were having this conversation anywhere else besides locked in a room on a Separatist stardestroyer crawling with battle droids, Count Dooku not far away and probably watching this on the security cameras, deep in enemy space and far away from the safe confines of the Temple and the Republic.

She’s silent for too long, because Anakin bursts out anxiously, “How did Dooku know? What does he want – what does he think that will do? It’s not going to – it doesn’t have to change anything.”

Anakin is being honest with her; Obi-Wan owes it to him to do the same. “Because,” she says, the words scraping raw against her throat, “he worked out that it was mutual.”

Anakin stares at her, anxiety melting into astonished joy, and makes an aborted motion towards her before he stops himself with a jerk. Obi-Wan watches him gather his distracted thoughts around himself before he says, “But why does it matter to Dooku?”

“Why do you think, Padawan?” Obi-Wan says. Whatever else they are, or aren’t, they are still Master and Padawan. She has a duty to him.

“I – he must think that you’d allow your emotions to trump your – everything else.” His words are scattered, as distracted as his mind probably is. “And me – that’s why I’m here? I’m blackmail?”

“That does appear to be his plan,” Obi-Wan concedes. She raises her hands to her hair, wincing as it strains at her wounds, and starts unpinning her hair for sleep.

Anakin picks gloomily at the bandages resting on his knee. “He doesn’t know you very well.”

“Apparently not.” She glances at the security cameras. “I need to meditate. You ought to do the same, Anakin.”

“I’d rather hotwire the door,” Anakin says. He’s still looking at her with that half-desperate look on his eyes, but he holds himself back. He moves with a jerk, like a broken droid, and starts gathering up the used bandages, his gaze flickering back to her every few seconds.

Obi-Wan looks down at her knees. She feels ripped open and raw; the whole evening had had a dreamlike quality to it from the moment that she’d woken up with the taste of bacta sickly sweet in her mouth to Dooku murmuring his accusation in her ear, pleased with his deductive skills. Until now – until Anakin. Anakin has a way of making the world around him seem more real, awfully and terrifyingly so.

“I’m surprised Dooku let you have a wrench and a screwdriver,” she makes herself say, raising her head, and folding her legs up onto the bed, rather gingerly.

“He didn’t. I found an unused sharp and some pliers in one of the drawers,” Anakin says over his shoulder, stuffing the used bandages into a bin.

“And the droid?”

“Cleaning droid. I thought about taking apart the medical droid, but I figured that would just annoy him. Well, maybe I should have.” He turns towards her, his back against the wall like it will keep him from running. “I’m sorry, Master. I really am. I tried not to be in love with you, but I couldn’t help it.”

Obi-Wan should say something to that: _I’m sorry, my Padawan, I’ve failed you, I tried not to be either, I’ve failed the Order_ , but she can’t quite make the words leave her mouth. Instead she says, “It doesn’t change anything.”

“It doesn’t?”

In the past forty-eight hours Obi-Wan has been shot, captured, drugged, and had her apprentice tortured in front of her; she allows herself three heartbeats to close her eyes and breathe in, reaching for serenity, and then says, “It doesn’t. We’ll discuss it once this affair is taken care of, if you insist.”

“If you say so, Master.” Anakin stares at her, then seems to realize what he’s doing and lets his gaze flicker down.

Obi-Wan rests her hands on her knees, closing her eyes. “Clean up this mess,” she says, and folds herself in the familiar embrace of meditation. She doesn’t have the Force to ground her, and for a moment all she feels at the thought of all that emptiness is blank panic, but Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi; she lives and breathes the Force, and even if she can’t consciously reach out and touch it, she knows that it’s still there, waiting.

 _Master_ , she whispers into the echoing emptiness of her mind, where the Force should be, stretching out backwards and forwards into eternity, _Master, what should I do?_

She hardly expects Qui-Gon to answer, but Obi-Wan has always found it easier to think through her problems if she puts them into words, makes it a lesson like the ones she’d had as a Padawan.

_Trust in the living Force, Obi-Wan._

_I can’t. It’s against the Code._

_The Force?_ Soft amusement, Qui-Gon chiding her for taking things too literally.

_No, Master. My feelings for Anakin. We are Jedi and he is my Padawan. This is forbidden._

_What would it change?_

_Everything. Nothing. We are Jedi, Master. If we deny that, then we are no different than Dooku and his Dark Jedi._

_Trust in the Force, Obi-Wan. And do not let him win._

Obi-Wan opens her eyes. The room is dark now, the remains of the droid stuffed under Anakin’s cot. Her Padawan is sprawled out on it, various limbs protruding from beneath the tangled sheets. His snoring is soft and familiar, and Obi-Wan smiles a little, unfolding from her meditative pose and wrapping herself in the blankets.

“Thank you, Master,” she whispers at the ceiling, and closes her eyes.

*

She wakes up to the familiar sound of Anakin muttering to himself while futzing with the droid. Obi-Wan opens her eyes and stares at the durasteel ceiling, wincing at the pain in her ribs, the white hot score across her thigh, the throb in her upper arm. Two things are certain: Dooku’s bacta isn’t very good quality and the painkillers have worn off. She breathes in, grasping for the familiar Jedi tricks that control pain; they aren’t as effective without the Force, but they help enough that she can sit up, wincing.

Anakin looks up from where he’s sparking two wires together. “Master, are you all right? You look pale.”

“I’m quite all right,” Obi-Wan lies, and slides off the bed to limp into the ‘fresher. When she looks in the mirror, washing her hands and splashing water on her face, she finds that she looks pale and rather delicate, dark hollows under her eyes – a shadow of herself. No wonder Anakin is worried.

She depresses the control for the door and drags herself back out into the med room, where Anakin promptly corners her against the door.

“Anakin?” Obi-Wan blinks up at him. Her Padawan had surpassed her in height when he was fourteen, much to her distaste. Anakin uses his height as a weapon as much as he does his lightsaber, to corner and intimidate; it’s a weapon Obi-Wan has never been able to teach him to use, and one that he’s never used on her before.

“Obi-Wan,” he says. He looks worse than she does, closer inspection reveals: haunted and a little desperate, his hands trembling on the stray droid part he’s still gripping. He backs her against the now-closed door, one arm up to block her escape. She’s fairly certain that she could still get past him if she wanted to – she’s better at hand-to-hand than he is, even if he has height and weight and the advantage of not having five blaster wounds on her.

“Anakin,” she says again. “What are you doing?”

His gaze is fixed on hers, his eyes dark with frustration and desire. “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night.”

“About how I told you we’d discuss this after we returned to Coruscant?”

“Well, you know I’m not a very good listener.”

“But I see you remember the rest,” Obi-Wan sighs.

“The important part,” Anakin says. “Where you said you loved me.”

Obi-Wan closes her eyes, sighing. “The relevant part, where I said we’d discuss this after this affair had concluded.”

“I don’t want to wait.”

“You’re going to have to,” Obi-Wan says firmly. She puts her hand on his chest to push him away, but he sets his feet and doesn’t move.

“Obi-Wan,” he says again.

“Get out of my way, my very young Padawan,” Obi-Wan says, which makes Anakin flinch and fall back, looking like Obi-Wan has just slapped him.

“What a charming tȇte-à-tȇte,” Count Dooku observes from the door. A medical droid approaches Anakin and Obi-Wan, gripping a pair of hypodermic needles in its hand.

“Is this really necessary, Count?” Obi-Wan sighs, submitting her arm to be stabbed. She glances aside and draws in her breath as the drug enters her system, damping down the little bit of the Force that had leaked through as her last dose faded. Anakin does the same, glaring at Dooku.

“Considering your reputation, forgive me if I don’t entirely trust you, Master Kenobi. Shall I have you cuffed as well?”

“No,” Obi-Wan says. “I remember what you said would happen if either of us resisted.”

He smiles a little. “Indeed. Have you given any thought to my offer?”

“I’m willing to present your offer to the Jedi Council,” Obi-Wan says. “I’m afraid I don’t have the authority to negotiate on their behalf, however.”

“There is one thing you can offer which they can’t,” Dooku invites.

Obi-Wan stares at him. “No.”

“No?” He glances at Anakin pointedly. “I can be considerably more persuasive if you’d like.”

 _Trust in the living Force_. “You don’t want me that way,” Obi-Wan says. “You want me to say yes and mean it.”

“Jedi or not, Master Kenobi, I could make you mean it.” He lets his gaze flicker up and down over her body, appreciative. “Come with me.”

“Where are you taking her?” Anakin demands, taking half a step forwards before one of Dooku’s bodyguards gets in his way. He stops, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“To meet some old friends,” Dooku says, glancing at the mess Anakin’s made of the cleaning droid. “I’ll have a real toolkit brought to you, though what you’ve accomplished with makeshifts is quite impressive. If you do fail the Trials, I see that you’ll have a promising career as a mechanic.”

“ _What_?” Anakin snarls at him, outraged.

“Anakin!” Obi-Wan snaps.

“Charming,” Dooku observes. “Master Kenobi?”

She sits down on the edge of the bed to pull her boots on, then the leather jerkin, pinning her hair up by touch in four looping braids at the back of her head. Anakin, trapped by the magnaguard, watches with his arms crossed over his chest. “If you hurt her –”

“You’ll hunt me down and rend the flesh from my bones. Hardly a fitting threat for a Jedi, even a Padawan.” He sounds bored more than anything else. “Come, Master Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan straightens up. “I am not one of your Dark Jedi to be summoned like a pet.”

“Not yet.”

She follows him anyway, aware of the last magnaguard falling in line behind her and Anakin staring glumly at her back. It would have been so easy to let him, Obi-Wan thinks distantly, distractedly. Let him kiss her, let this – whatever this is, or could be – happen. It wouldn’t be the first time. Jedi are only people, and Master and Padawan live in each others’ pockets day-in and day-out for years. Not many Jedi leave the order, but more than half of those who do leave it for love, and no few of those are, or were, Master and Padawan. Obi-Wan is sure that she’d had her fair share of fantasies about Qui-Gon when she’d been Anakin’s age, and even more embarrassingly, fairly certain that Qui-Gon had known, but she’d never acted on it – never would have. She may have spent all but the first year and a half of her life in the Order, but even as a Padawan – especially as a Padawan – she never would have chanced doing anything that might jeopardize her position, not when she knew what was at stake.

“Why me?” Obi-Wan asks of the back of Dooku’s head. “I’m just another Jedi. There’s nothing special about me.” Not like Anakin. Whether or not Anakin is the Chosen One, which is a Jedi myth that Obi-Wan isn’t particularly sure she believes in from day to day, there is something special about him. Not that she’ll ever admit as much to Anakin.

“Such a good Jedi to be so modest,” Dooku murmurs. “You are in fact more than ‘just another Jedi,’ as you so charmingly put it, Master Kenobi. You are the only living Jedi to have destroyed a Sith Lord – and you did it when you were only a Padawan. Don’t you think that makes you remarkable?”

“The Force was with me that day.”

“As it was not with your master Qui-Gon Jinn? You are twice the Jedi that Qui-Gon ever was.”

Stung, Obi-Wan snaps, “Qui-Gon Jinn was loyal to the Order and to the Republic, which is more than I can say for his master!”

Dooku smiles. “You know, Master Kenobi, there are other arguments I might use on another Jedi. I could talk about the corruption of the Republic, the disorder in the Jedi, the power of the Dark Side, but I suspect that you wouldn’t be interested in any of that. You know it all already, and you don’t care. But there are two things you want: you want your Padawan to live and you want the war to end. And I can give you both.”

“Perhaps I don’t want you to,” Obi-Wan says coldly.

“Oh, I doubt you do, Master Kenobi. But pride isn’t very fitting for a Jedi Knight: will you risk the Republic for it?”

“I will never join the Sith, Count.”

“So you say now, Master Kenobi.” He gives her a thoughtful look. “You are a strange one. The power of the Dark Side doesn’t tempt you; you’ve touched it before, but it has never touched you. I suspect that you could walk in the shadows of the Sith tombs on Korriban and emerge unscathed. Few Jedi could.”

“And you want to corrupt me?” Obi-Wan says. “I am a Jedi Knight, Dooku. I cannot be so easily undone as all that.”

“Say yes, Master Kenobi. Save the Jedi. Save the Republic. Save that foolish Padawan of yours. I am certain that given time, I can convince you of the wisdom of my ways. Of the ways of the Sith.”

“I am willing to present your proposal to the Council,” Obi-Wan repeats stubbornly. “I do not have the authority to negotiate on their behalf on a matter of this importance.”

“And if the Council agrees to my terms?” says Dooku, sounding faintly amused. “All of them?”

Obi-Wan swallows, feeling faintly sick. “Then you’ll have your Jedi pet, Count.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brings in material from the EU -- specifically from the Clone Wars comics. Hopefully it's fairly self-explanatory without prior knowledge of the EU.
> 
> Thanks to Dogstar for the beta!

Somewhat to Obi-Wan’s surprise, Dooku takes her to what must be his private holocomm chamber. Obi-Wan programs her ident code and the Jedi Council’s information in, frowning a little when she gets the pingback that means the Council is out of session at the moment, would she like to leave a message? She puts in Yoda’s information instead, waiting until she gets a positive response, and steps up onto the platform next to Count Dooku as Yoda flickers into existence in front of her, pale and blue.

“Good to see you it is, Obi-Wan,” Yoda says. “Say the same for you, Count Dooku, I cannot.”

Dooku inclines his head slightly. “As ever, Master Yoda, it is a pleasure to speak to you again.”

Yoda ignores him. “Well you are, Master Kenobi?”

“I am recovering, Master, thank you for asking,” Obi-Wan replies.

Mace Windu appears beside Yoda, slightly out of breath. “Obi-Wan, it’s good to see you on your feet. Anakin’s report on your condition was somewhat alarming.”

“For me as well. Masters, Count Dooku has asked me to present an offer to the Jedi Council on his behalf, on the condition that neither the Senate or the Supreme Chancellor be informed.”

Windu and Yoda both glance at Dooku, who doesn’t speak. “It’s the middle of the night here,” Windu says finally. “It will take some time to assemble the Council.”

“Record this message and consider it at your leisure,” Dooku orders. “I assure you that Master Kenobi isn’t going anywhere.”

“Very well,” Windu says. “Continue.”

Obi-Wan clasps her hands behind her back, breathing in. “On Geonosis last year the Count informed told me that there was a second Sith Lord in the Galactic Senate. As you know, Masters, the Jedi Council investigated the claims and found no evidence of its veracity. The Count has informed me once more that the Sith is still present in the Senate and has offered to reveal his identity to the Jedi Council with several conditions. First of all, the Senate must agree to treat peacefully with the Confederacy. Secondly, the Sith in the Senate must be removed from power. Third, he wants me.”

Windu, who has been nodding along with this, blinks and stares at her. “Beg pardon?”

Obi-Wan waits a moment for Dooku to chime in, but when he doesn’t, she says, “The Count has made it quite clear that one of the requirements of this bargain is my inclusion as a hostage.”

“Although I hope that Master Kenobi will become more than that in time,” Dooku says, with an amused edge in his voice that makes the hair go up on the back of Obi-Wan’s neck.

“The return of the hostages is non-negotiable, Count,” Windu says. “Both Master Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker must be returned before any further action is taken once your claims have been investigated.”

“Oh, Skywalker you can have, if he’ll leave his master,” Dooku says. “I have no use for him. But Obi-Wan Kenobi stays with me.”

“To give a Jedi Knight to the Sith an unhappy option is,” Yoda says, his face inscrutable. “Require further discussion, this will.”

“Of course,” Dooku says. “I expect nothing less. Present my offer to the Jedi Council. Meditate on it. Talk amongst yourselves. Remember that if the Supreme Chancellor or the Senate hears of this, Skywalker and Kenobi will die.”

“You have made that quite clear,” says Windu. “Obi-Wan, stay strong and trust in the Force. We will not allow harm to come to you or your Padawan.”

“Yes, Master,” Obi-Wan says, bowing. “May the Force be with you, Masters.”

“And with you, Obi-Wan.”

Dooku flicks a hand at the projector to turn it off. “Well done, Master Kenobi,” he says. “I’m sure it won’t take them too long to come to a decision, not with the lives of two Jedi at stake.”

“The Council will not agree to the use of a Jedi Knight as a bargaining chip, Dooku,” Obi-Wan warns him. “You were a Jedi Master once. You would do well to remember that some things are not negotiable.”

“Everything is negotiable, Master Kenobi. Including you. Your…” He lingered over the pause, a small smile playing around his lips. “…honor.”

“Jedi have no honor, Count. You know that.”

“Jedi like to believe that. You ought to know better, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t shudder this time, though it’s a near thing because it’s not merely her body that he’s threatening. Dooku is a Sith Lord; he wants her soul.

“I am a Jedi Knight. Your Sith tricks will not work on me,” she says instead.

“I can wait,” Dooku smiles. He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t have to. Instead he beckons at her the way he might a pet. “Come with me.”

Obi-Wan follows him; she doesn’t have a choice. Her booted steps are near silent on the floor as they leave the holocomm chamber, proceeding down a hallway that looks more or less the same as all the others. With the Force, she could probably pinpoint exactly where she was in the ship, following the glowing tracks of her presence back to the med room and maybe even to the hangar where she and Anakin must have been brought onboard. Without it she’s as lost as any Force-null being – well, perhaps not quite; even without the Force behind her gaze her eyes pick out tiny imperfections in the walls and floor, differentiating one corridor from the other, marking out weak spots and differences and storing them mentally away in the archives of her memory against some future necessity of knowledge.

Somewhat to her surprise, Count Dooku leads her into one of the ship’s hangar bays. Obi-Wan doesn’t understand why until she sees who’s waiting there and barely conceals her automatic grasp for a lightsaber that isn’t there.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Asajj Ventress scowls, her hand going to one of her own lightsabers. The Darksider is flanked by two of Dooku’s Dark Jedi, Tol Skorr, whom Obi-Wan has read about in Master Tholme’s intelligence reports but never met personally, and Obi-Wan’s old friend Quinlan Vos, who’d defected from the Order just over a year ago. They’ve known each other since they were both Padawans; anyone who didn’t know Vos as well as she does would have missed the flash of panic in his eyes when he saw her.

“Ventress,” Obi-Wan says coldly. “Skorr. Vos.”

“Hello, Obi-Wan,” Ventress says after a moment’s consideration and a glance for confirmation at her master. She prowls around Obi-Wan, trailing her fingers across Obi-Wan’s chest, and smiles – predatory, dangerous. “What brings a Jedi like you to a place like this?”

“Not my own intentions, I assure you, Asajj,” Obi-Wan says.

The other woman hooks her fingers into Obi-Wan’s belt, smiling. “Not so brave without your lightsaber, are you, Obi-Wan?”

“I didn’t need a lightsaber to escape your prison on Rattatak, Asajj,” Obi-Wan reminds her, smiling back and letting an edge of her bad mood finally shine through. “Or don’t you remember?”

Ventress’s smile vanishes abruptly and she closes her fist on Obi-Wan’s belt, pulling her close enough to kiss. “I remember you stole my master’s lightsaber. And my ship!” She grabs Obi-Wan’s chin, her fingers tight enough to bruise. “If your Jedi tricks are so powerful, Obi-Wan, then why are you still here?”

“I have her Padawan,” Dooku intervenes.

“Skywalker?” Ventress says, momentarily distracted. “Let me kill him for you, Master.”

“As tempting as the offer is, I require him to keep Master Kenobi here from doing anything rash. For the time being, at least. Unless, of course, she decides to take me up on my offer.”

“No,” Obi-Wan says, flat.

“What do you want with this Jedi, Master?” Skorr demands. “Kenobi’s high up in Republic command. She’ll know more than that Jedi spy Shylar –”

“There are other things that I want from Master Kenobi besides information,” Dooku says. “For example, that she take _your_ place, as she is at least twice as intelligent as you.”

Skorr scowls. “I’ve heard all about Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he says. “You’re shorter than I expected, Jedi.”

“And you could do with washing your hair more than twice a year, Darksider,” Obi-Wan returns coldly. She raises her hands and shoves Asajj Ventress away, knocking aside the other woman’s arm as Ventress moves to strike her. A shake from Dooku’s head stops his protégé and Ventress steps back, scowling.

“If this is yet another pathetic display of everything I could gain from joining you, Dooku, then it’s a very poor show,” Obi-Wan goes on, drawing herself up straight. “Unless you actually do plan on torturing me, in which case I advise you to get on with it, I’d like to be escorted back to my cell. The company here has just become…insufferable.”

To her distaste, Dooku looks more amused than anything else. “If you insist, Master Kenobi. Commander Ventress and I have something to discuss, anyway.”

He raises a hand to get the attention of two of his magnaguards, who fall into position on either side of Obi-Wan. She leaves the hangar with her back straight, aware of Asajj Ventress’s gaze hungry on the back of her neck, like she’s thinking about getting it between her hands and squeezing. Well, she’s never liked Obi-Wan; she probably is.

They’re most of the way back to the med room when she hears footsteps behind her. “I’ll take General Kenobi the rest of the way,” Quinlan Vos says, catching up to the magnaguards. “The Count’s orders.”

It must be, because the magnaguards leave Obi-Wan with her old friend without a moment’s hesitation, proceeding down the hallway with heavy clicks of their metal feet on the duranium floor. Obi-Wan crosses her arms over her chest, wincing at the way it pulls at the healing wound on her left arm, and turns to face Vos.

“Come to plead for your new master, Quin?” she demands.

The year or so since Obi-Wan had seen him last hasn’t really changed him. He’s the same old Quin, minus the Jedi robes, now exchanged for black leather that leaves his arms bare, showing off the yellow Kiffar markings across his left forearm. Obi-Wan glances at the lightsaber on his hip, wondering her chances of getting to it before Quin can stop her, but they aren’t good; Quin’s just as fast as she is, without the wounds and with the Force to help him.

“Didn’t expect to see you here, Obi-Wan,” he says.

“I didn’t expect to be here. I’m sure you can ask your new master for the details, as I’ve been in a bacta tank for the past two days.”

“I can sense your injuries,” Quinlan says. “Why aren’t you using the Force to heal yourself more quickly?”

“I can’t. Count Dooku has some kind of drug that blocks the neural connection to the midichlorians that allow us to manipulate the Force.” Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you don’t know about that.”

“Count doesn’t tell us everything,” he shrugs. “Or all that much, come to think of it.”

“Somehow I’m not surprised,” Obi-Wan says bitterly. “What do you want, Quinlan? You want to torture me too? Threaten to kill my Padawan? Maybe make an example of me for Tholme and Yoda, like you did with Master K’Kruhk? Oh, yes, Quin, I heard about that. What started out as simple spying has turned into something more; you _have_ gone over to the Dark Side.” She turns away from him, deliberately cruel. “Take me back to my cell. I have nothing to say to a traitor.”

Quinlan grabs her arm to stop her, his fingers digging into the wound there. Obi-Wan bites back a cry of pain and he lets go immediately, apologizing and holds out his hand with the Force gathered around it – silent peace-offering.

“Fine,” Obi-Wan says shortly, clutching at her arm. She hisses out through her teeth as coolness descends, the muscle mending itself, the flesh knitting back together over it, leaving behind a lingering soreness and what Obi-Wan knows will be an ugly scar; Quin’s never been a particularly delicate healer. “Thanks,” she adds, grudging.

“You want me to do the rest?” Quin offers, though he looks rather dubious about his own abilities in that arena.

“Just give me a boost,” Obi-Wan says. Dark Jedi or not, it would be foolish to refuse his help. “Bacta will do the rest.”

She sighs in relief as the pain recedes, Quinlan frowning in concentration as he passes his hands over her wounds, patching up the ones on her torso and healing the graze on her leg completely. “You’re pretty beat up, Obi-Wan,” he says. “What happened? You’re not usually this clumsy.”

“What do you think?” Obi-Wan says, taking the opportunity to lean against the wall. “I got tired, I got careless, I got shot – and I got myself and my Padawan captured for it, so that now Dooku has leverage when he plays his tricks with the Council. What do you care anyway, Quin? Not like we’re playing for the same team anymore.”

“There’s more going on here than you know, Obi-Wan,” Quin insists. “Just trust me, all right?”

“Why? I saw what you did to K’Kruhk on Coruscant. Are you really going to try and tell me that it’s all just an act?”

Quinlan shakes his head, leaning close with one hand resting on the wall beside her left shoulder. “You know I can’t talk here. Dooku’s –” He goes still, eyes narrowing, then mutters, “Play along,” and kisses her on the mouth.

Obi-Wan goes stiff with indignation, flattening her hands against Quin’s chest in protest. _Anakin_ , she thinks bewilderingly, and makes herself kiss Quin back, moving one hand to the back of his neck to pull him in closer as she spies Tol Skorr approaching from around a corner. She and Quin had made out a few times when they were teenagers, but that’s always a dangerous route to take for Jedi, and they had long since settled into being very good friends.

“So that’s what you wanted from Kenobi,” Skorr observes, and Obi-Wan takes the cue to shove Quin away, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.

“Traitor scum,” she says coldly. “Both of you.”

“Come on, Obi-Wan,” Quin coaxes. “You and I go way back –”

“I don’t care if we were in the cradle together, Vos, I already told you: it’s over between us. I am a Jedi Knight and you’re nothing but a slave of the Sith.”

Skorr is starting to look extremely entertained. “What about that purple-haired bit of yours then, Vos? Get tired of playing in the dirt?”

“Don’t talk about Khaleen –”

Obi-Wan takes the opportunity to slap Quinlan. “Hey!” he protests. “Obi-Wan –”

“Like I told the Count: unless you’re planning to torture me, take me back to my cell. Traitor,” she adds again for good measure.

“Don’t tempt me, Kenobi,” Quinlan snaps, grabbing her arm and propelling her down the corridor while Skorr follows in their wake, guffawing. “Much as I hate to admit it, Skorr’s right. You know more than Shylar did.”

“Another Jedi you murdered,” Obi-Wan spits, her gaze flickering to the control panel as Quin hits the button for the door. Droid parts go everywhere as Anakin leaps up, his face contorted with outrage when he sees the two Dark Jedi.

“Let her go!”

“Or what, Skywalker? You’ll talk me to death?” He shoves Obi-Wan inside; the door sliding shut behind them. Anakin grabs Obi-Wan’s hands, drawing her towards the bed and installing her firmly on it. “Are you all right, Master? Did they hurt you? What did Dooku want? What are the renegades doing here?”

Obi-Wan bats his hands aside. “Ventress wants to kill you and torture me, Skorr just wants to torture me, I think Quin wants to help us, Dooku still wants me to join him, no, and yes, better than I was when I left. Does that about cover everything?”

“Uh – yes,” Anakin says, blinking as he backtracks his own frenzied questions. “Asajj Ventress is here? That hairless harpy –”

“Anakin.”

Anakin stares at her, his jaw set stubbornly. “She tortured you,” he says. 

The words fall like stones in the empty silence of the room; his gaze is bleak, distant for a moment, lost in memory. Obi-Wan reaches for his left hand, entwines his fingers with her own, both of them callused and a little scorched from long years of lightsaber use. “I remember,” she says. “But that was in the past. Pay attention to the present, my young apprentice. Trust in –”

“– the living Force, I know,” Anakin says, abruptly _present_ again, his gaze direct and focused. He looks down at their joined hands, then up again at Obi-Wan’s face. “I’m not going to just forgive and forget, you know. She made me think you were dead. For _weeks_. And she tortured you, and Alpha –”

“We are Jedi, Anakin,” Obi-Wan reminds him. “We never forget, but we always forgive.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Master.”

“Anakin –”

“I can’t. I won’t.” He meets her eyes. “Some things don’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“And we are not the ones to decide what those are!” Obi-Wan says, not liking the turn the conversation has taken. She can tell that he has a rebuttal ready at his lips, but to her relief he doesn’t voice it, just turns his head aside and stares down at their hands. Obi-Wan starts to draw hers back, but he stops her, his grip tightening on hers.

“So Ventress is here,” he says, changing the subject. “And Quinlan Vos and Tol Skorr. Did you see anyone else, Master? Sora Bulq, or –” He racks his brain for the other Dark Jedi Dooku has recruited, but Obi-Wan is already shaking her head.

“Just those three. The good news is that I was able to make a report to Master Yoda and Master Windu with Count Dooku’s offer.”

Anakin’s mouth twists. “What did they say?”

“They’ll present it to the Council.” She smoothes her thumb down the seam of her trousers. “There’s something very odd going on here. I don’t understand why Dooku won’t allow the Jedi to at least tell the Supreme Chancellor, technically we have no authority over Senators unless we actually have confirmation of –” She stops, an unpleasant thought nagging at the forefront of her brain.

“I don’t get it either,” Anakin is saying. “Palpatine could help. He could order all the Senators to have their midichlorian counts tested, or –”

“Unless the Supreme Chancellor is the Sith Lord.”

Anakin stares. “No!” he exclaims. “No, that’s impossible, that’s insane, I _know_ him –”

“It all makes sense now,” Obi-Wan says, staring past him. “This whole war, everything –”

“No, it doesn’t!” Anakin wails. “Palpatine’s my friend, he’s Padmé’s friend, he’s the Supreme Chancellor, Master, don’t you realize how crazy that sounds? He’s the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic! The Order would know if there was a Sith Lord practically next door to the Temple! You’re just jealous because you think he keeps undermining your authority as my master! I mean, for the love of – he saved my life, he –”

That shakes Obi-Wan out of her stupor. “What? When?”

“On Jabiim,” Anakin says blankly. “When we were deciding who would stay and who would go to the mesa, we were all going to stay, but then the Chancellor requested that I leave and lead the evacuation efforts, and everyone else stayed and died, he – everyone else died there. All my friends. All the Jedi. You.”

For a heartbeat his gaze goes distant and distracted, lost down a path which Obi-Wan can’t follow. She’d read the official report on the Republic’s disastrous defeat on Jabiim when she’d returned to Coruscant following her escape from Ventress’s dungeons on Rattatak, but Anakin, the only Jedi to make it off the planet alive after Obi-Wan’s capture and presumed death, hasn’t spoken of it in the weeks since her return. Obi-Wan doesn’t know how to breach the distance that had opened up between them during their absence – everything that happened to Anakin, everything Ventress had done to her. They are Master and Padawan still; both of them have been carrying on as if nothing else has happened.

“Anakin –” Obi-Wan says tentatively.

“He can’t have known about Jabiim,” he says, despairing. “He can’t have. Or about you –” He scrubs his hands through his hair, his eyes wild. “No. It’s insane. It’s a Sith trick –”

Obi-Wan looks at his frenzied expression and makes herself say, “Very likely,” even though some part of her is ticking up all the proofs in the back of her mind. The previous Senator from Naboo had been murdered. Palpatine had been elected Chancellor during the crisis on Naboo, when the first Sith Lord had appeared. He’d authorized the creation of the Grand Army of the Republic. Every Jedi Knight who’s ever been close to him has died in the war, all except for Anakin. He’s steadily been eroding the freedoms of Republic citizens. A thousand other tiny things, things that Obi-Wan had never considered on their own, but when put together form a cascade of evidence. _The one who intends to replace me with a new apprentice_ , Dooku had said. And he’d looked at Anakin.

Obi-Wan’s hand closes on Anakin’s sleeve before she can stop herself.

He looks back at her immediately, panic fading into worry. “Master?”

“It’s nothing,” Obi-Wan makes herself say. _I will never permit him to have you_. “Whoever the second Sith is, neither you nor I can do anything about it at the moment. We have our own problems to concern ourselves with.”

Anakin runs his hands through his hair – shaggy and starting to grow out since the last time they’d been on Coruscant – again, then settles back down with a visible force of effort, tension evident in the line of his shoulders. “Yes, Master,” he says miserably. “I – you said something. Earlier. About being better than when you left. And I can sense that you’ve been partially healed since, but you’re still Force-blocked –”

“Quinlan,” Obi-Wan supplies, glad for the distraction. “He gave me a boost. I think –” She thinks of the security camera and compromises, “We were Padawans together. He wasn’t happy about seeing me here, but we were very good friends before he…left.”

“Defected,” Anakin scowls.

She inclines her head.

“Can I see?” he asks hesitantly, his fingers hovering over the buttons on her jerkin. “I can sense you’re still hurt, I should –”

Obi-Wan closes her eyes for a moment, then nods. “You might as well change the bandages,” she adds, and starts shrugging out of the jerkin, then the shirt as Anakin leaps up to find the bacta bandages he’d used the night before, nearly tripping over a stray droid part as he does so.

Obi-Wan puts the clothes aside and peels off the bandage on her upper arm, finding the wound there reddish and raw, but within a week it will be nothing but scar tissue and a bad memory. Anakin comes back and perches on the bed beside her, his breath warm against her skin as he unwinds the bandage around her torso.

“I’ve been thinking,” Anakin says tentatively.

“Color me shocked.”

He smiles a little. “I can, you know. Um, I’ve been thinking that we should talk about – about what you said last night. I know you said you wanted to wait until we were back on Coruscant,” he adds quickly when Obi-Wan opens her mouth to remind him of this, “but we’re here now. And we don’t have anything to do except talk. And – I think we should, because if we don’t, then Dooku’s going to use it against us. He’s already trying to use it against us. And you’ve always said that you have to understand a weapon in order to counter it.”

He’s right, damn it. Obi-Wan looks at his earnest gaze and says, “All right. But not right now – let’s finish this first. And I want to meditate.”

“Of course you do,” Anakin says, giving her a small, hopeful smile. He pulls the last of the bandage aside. “That looks much better, Master.”

It does. Quinlan had given her a boost equivalent to another two days or so in a bacta tank, and while it still hurts, not as healed as the wound on her arm or her thigh, it’s significantly better than it had been a few hours ago.

“I guess Master Vos is all right,” Anakin concedes, reaching for the new bandages.

“I guess,” Obi-Wan agrees. She glances at the droid pieces strewn across the other bed and the floor. “What are you doing with the droid?”

Anakin glances up at the camera. “Making it better.”

“It doesn’t usually take you this long to fix a broken droid,” Obi-Wan observes, lifting her arms so that he can get the bandage around.

“It’s not broken,” Anakin says.

Obi-Wan shrugs and lets it go; he’s clearly up to something. “Did Dooku send you the toolkit?”

Anakin nods. “I don’t know why, though. I can hack the door now if I can get through the paneling; there’s no door control on this side.”

“Maybe he just wants to keep you from getting into any trouble,” Obi-Wan suggests.

He snorts. “You do have a plan, don’t you, Master?”

“That depends,” Obi-Wan says as he finishes and sits back, wiping the last of the bacta off on his trousers.

“On what?”

“On what the Council decides.” She pulls her shirt back on. “Is there anything to eat?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Dogstar for the beta!

After devouring one of the reconstituted meals that Anakin offers her, Obi-Wan settles down on the bed, folding herself into a lotus position. Anakin has gone back to his droid, though he looks up at her from time to time, his gaze dark and worried. Obi-Wan, used to being observed by him, doesn’t pay any attention, just settles her hands on her knees and closes her eyes.

Immediately the absence of the Force is there, a vast yawning blankness that swallows up everything around her. Obi-Wan is front and center with it, alone in the stark desert of her mind, with nothing to ground her. For a heartbeat the panic rises up at all that emptiness, the way it had last night, but the same truth still remains. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi Knight: she lives and breathes the Force. Nothing can keep her from touching it. Even Asajj Ventress’s mask could only keep her from concentrating. Dooku’s drug is a truly marvelous and terrifying invention, but nothing that can truly keep her from touching the Force.

Obi-Wan breathes in, out, in again, fitting her breath into one of her oldest and most familiar meditative patterns, the first one she’d been taught as a youngling at the Temple. She stretches her mind out, trying to find the edges of the emptiness, because all illusions aside, it can’t go on forever.

 _Let go, Obi-Wan,_ she hears Qui-Gon say, something out of the distant past, a life she can barely remember. _Open your mind to the living Force, which resides within all beings. Nothing can truly take the Force from you._

Master Yoda, in a class back at the Temple when she had still been a Padawan: _A way, there always is. If through you cannot go, around you may, or over, or under. Always a way there is._

And Obi-Wan finds a way. Deep in her trance, she can feel the drug inside her, an oily slick on the surface of her mind, wending its way through her blood vessels, wrapped around her muscles. Beneath it, the Force lies placid and calm, deep as the oceans on Dac, waiting for her to release it. The drug isn’t a poison, it’s a prison, but prison locks can be picked.

Using the Force to purge a drug from the body is child’s play. Obi-Wan has done it a hundred times, a thousand, but never like this. She lets her mind race over the surface of the drug, trying to find a weakness that she can exploit, an edge of it that she can slip under, anything that she can use to touch the Force and destroy it.

No. That’s not right. Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Jedi Knight; it’s not her task to destroy. The drug isn’t evil, merely a tool. Destruction is not the way of the Jedi. So how –

Twelve hours. It must take more time to work its way through her system, but not by much; Anakin had mentioned that he could feel it wearing off. Obi-Wan breathes in. _I am a Jedi._ She touches the surface of the drug experimentally. It’s only been a few hours since the last dose, but she can feel it thinning with every nanosecond that passes. It will be hours more until it’s gone entirely. Not that way, then.

Obi-Wan changes her breathing pattern to a different one, sinking more deeply into her trance. Even for a Knight, it’s dangerous to go so deep, especially without the Force to tether her to her own body. She can still feel a line binding her to the surface – the Master-Padawan bond with Anakin, and a second one, stubborn and thorny and unwanted, wrapped around it. Her affection for him. Her love. Obi-Wan acknowledges it even as she leaves behind her own body, letting her consciousness expand beyond the limits of her skin. Once more she comes up against the boundaries of the drug, but this time they move with her gentle push, letting her mind pass through them with only a little burning resistance, like stepping through an energy shield. And there the Force is, waiting for her.

She doesn’t fight back yet, just explores the underside of the drug with her mind. It’s a clever thing, really. Biochemistry isn’t Obi-Wan’s specialty or even something she particularly enjoys, but she’s studied it at the Temple and knows enough to tell that Dooku’s drug truly is a remarkable creation. The Jedi Council will need to know about it. They may even be glad to have a sample of it – no. They will be, and not just because it could be a terrifying weapon against both the Jedi and the Sith. It’s very difficult to find undiluted evil; this isn’t it.

With the Force behind her, Obi-Wan doesn’t need to look for a weakness in the drug. Her mind races across it, past the superficial horror of the thing (and even there she can find some good, because sometimes it’s a mercy not to have to feel the living Force), and sinks deep into its chemical make-up. She spends further time exploring it, until she’s confident she could recreate it on a computer screen, if not in the lab, and settles down to pry apart the atomic bonds within it, rearranging them into something that will sink harmlessly into her bloodstream. As an afterthought, she leaves just enough on the surface that it will appear on a med scan, though not enough to impact her use of the Force once she’s back in her body.

Freed from the confines of the drug, Obi-Wan lets her consciousness expand outward. She touches Anakin first, deep in moving meditation, his mind focused totally on the task his hands are doing. Even with the drug settled under his skin she can feel the strength of the Force, gathered in a close cloak around him with the dual ferocity of his concentration and his emotions. Obi-Wan has never been able to train that out of him. She lingers on him for a moment, gentle with fondness, then moves past him, past the walls of the room and further out into the dreadnought.

The Dark Side reigns on the starship. Obi-Wan passes by Tol Skorr’s rage and lingers at Asajj Ventress’s hatred, before moving on. Skorr and Ventress are simple – pawns of the Dark Side. Both of them could be more if they ever accepted it. She finds Quin brooding in the hangar bay, lurking on his ship and trying to find serenity in meditation. The Light Side and the Dark Side are all tangled up within him, each warring for superiority. He feels – he feels like a Jedi, Obi-Wan realizes as she brushes the surface of his mind, not a Sith, and has the mad urge to whisper a greeting in his ear, though she restrains herself and passes on. Droids everywhere, the beautiful humming energy of the ship itself – and Dooku.

There’s no cloud of the Dark Side hanging over him, not coiled up around him or enveloping him. Instead it’s all gathered close beneath his skin, so that when Obi-Wan looks at him, all she can see is shadow and darkness. His control is absolute; it doesn’t spill past him the way it does with his apprentices. Even this deep in trance, Obi-Wan can’t touch his mind; looking into such utter blackness would be like looking into the abyss. She edges cautiously back, hoping he hasn’t noticed her intrusion, and lets her mind flow further outwards, past the boundaries of the starship’s walls, into the echoing hollowness of space. The hyperspace confuses her for a moment, until Obi-Wan falls into the rhythm of the movement and steadies herself. She’s strong in the Force, but not as strong as Anakin, and as she reaches further and further out, hundreds and thousands of parsecs out from their current position, searching for a Jedi, any Jedi, she feels the edges of her conscious mind, the markers that make her _her_ , Obi-Wan Kenobi, and not just a gathering of loose atoms, starting to burn off into the flow of the Force.

This is what Qui-Gon had warned her about, the only other time she’d tried this. She could lose herself in the Force, fade away or wander forever or – no one knows for sure, because those who lose themselves that way seldom return. Obi-Wan hesitates, still reaching out, stretching to the very edge of her capacity, and edges up against the mind of another Jedi.

Only a few Jedi are telepaths, and Obi-Wan isn’t one of them, not by nature. Kit Fisto isn’t either, and from everything that Obi-Wan has read on the subject, she wouldn’t be able to do this if he wasn’t meditating as well. His trance isn’t as deep as hers is, but it doesn’t need to be. She spills out her relief in emotions instead, practically throwing herself against his shields until he notices and replies, _Obi-Wan –?_

 _Kit, help_ – She shoves the image of the ship at him, Dooku and Ventress and Skorr, the drug and everything it entails, Anakin being choked with the Force. _He wants me, and he’s going to kill my Padawan to get me!_

_We’re coming – where –?_

_Don’t know. Hyperspace. Destination maybe Serenno. Maybe Lola Sayu._

_We’re coming,_ Kit repeats, more reassurance than real words. _Hold on._

 _Bring Aayla or Tholme,_ Obi-Wan adds, afterthought. _Quin here. Can still be saved._

_Will try. Don’t fear ¬–_

Hesitating, she blurts out her final suspicion: _Tell Council. Think Chancellor is Sith._

Shock radiates back towards her. _Why ¬–?_

_Makes sense._

_Will tell. Have to go. May the Force be with you, sister._

_And you, brother._

He disengages from the mental connection. Obi-Wan does as well, satisfied that she’s accomplished what she set out to do, and realizes to her horror that in doing so she’s done exactly what she’s been cautioned over and over again never to do. She’s left her body without creating a line to guide her home again, and now she’s lost in the Force.

Her own panic threatens to swallow her. Obi-Wan loves the Force; she’s known it her entire life, from the moment she took her first breath until the heartbeat when she sank inside herself to come here, and she’s never thought that she could be afraid of it. Afraid of what it could do, certainly; she’s seen the power of the Dark Side and she knows the risk it poses to all Jedi. But that’s the Dark Side, not the Force itself. This, though – this is the Force, pure and simple. It stretches out around her, beautiful and terrible and endless, and Obi-Wan knows she has a choice. She can try and find her way back to her body, wander through the Force forever while parts of her spin off into eternity, or she can simply – let go.

For a heartbeat, it’s tempting. Let go, and become one with the Force, never have to wield her lightsaber again or know the sudden searing loss of another Jedi as more and more of them fall in battle. Never have to know fear again –

Or love.

Obi-Wan shouldn’t love anyone, but she does. She loves the Force and the Jedi and the Republic; she loved her Master and she loves her apprentice. Loves Anakin. As tempting as it is to let go, it’s not her time yet, and giving up isn’t the Jedi way. She can’t leave Anakin alone to face Count Dooku.

 _I’m sorry,_ she whispers regretfully to the Force, reaching out. There has to be a way to get back. Surely she must have left some kind of trail ¬–

No trail, Obi-Wan realizes slowly, but a line stretched thin that binds her not to her own body, but to Anakin Skywalker. She’d missed it before, but she finds it now, and follows it back, feeling the steady anchor of his mind at the end of it. Anakin does everything ferociously, feels too deeply, loves and hates too easily – all things that a Jedi should never do. She feels the fierceness of his love growing the closer she gets; not the steady flame of a candle, but the brilliant incandescence of a supernova, the kind of love that threatens to destroy everything in its path. If Obi-Wan had any sense, she’d fear it.

It seems an eternity before she slides into her own skin again. Her body seems stiff and unfamiliar, like wearing someone else’s clothes; for a moment she has to consciously think about every breath she takes just in case she stops. Her eyes feel like they’ve gummed shut, scratchy and a little sore when she opens them to find Anakin sitting across from her, his position mirror image to her own. She’d slipped into trance with her hands on her knees; now Anakin is holding them, fingers twined together and palms pressed to palms, binding them together. His eyes twitch behind his lids as she watches, then he shakes himself a little, throwing off the trance. His grip tightens on hers as his eyes snap open.

“You left your body,” he says accusingly, not waiting for her to speak. “You were lost in the Force – I felt you leave, and you didn’t come back –”

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan croaks, her throat dry. “I didn’t know I was going to do that.”

Anakin gives her a suspicious look, then clambers down off the bed to get her a glass of water. Obi-Wan takes it gratefully, stretching her cramping legs and wondering why she’s so sore.

“How long was I gone?”

“Hours,” he says, still grumpy, and settles back on the bed again, one knee knocking against hers. “I felt you touch the Force again, and then you left and didn’t come back and I didn’t know where you’d gone ¬–” He clenches his fists; Obi-Wan can hear frustration warring with fear in his voice.

“Help is coming,” she explains wearily. “Kit Fisto – he’s closest. I touched his mind.”

“He doesn’t know where we are,” Anakin says cautiously. “ _We_ don’t know where we are.”

“There are only a handful of places Dooku would bring us. The Republic knows where they are and where we were before we were captured; they can place ships along the hyperspace routes to intercept us, if they can spare them.”

Anakin apparently hasn’t thought this far ahead. “The Citadel on Lola Sayu,” he says, shuddering. The ancient prison had been designed to hold Dark Jedi centuries before the Clone Wars had begun; unfortunately for the Republic, it had been captured by Separatist forces near the beginning of the war. No Jedi who is sent there has ever returned.

“Maybe,” Obi-Wan concedes. “But I think it’s more likely that we’re going to Serenno, Dooku’s homeworld. He’ll want us somewhere that he can control us, and there are too many variables at the Citadel or any other Separatist planet.”

“So we might have a chance of being rescued!” Anakin says, straightening up. “Instead of just waiting for the Council to – you know. Decide whether or not they want to trade us for the Sith Lord.”

“Me,” Obi-Wan corrects. “Dooku will return you to the Jedi. It’s me he wants, not you; he told Windu and Yoda as much.”

Anakin’s mouth sets in a stubborn line. “I won’t leave you to the Sith, Master.”

“I hope you won’t have to,” Obi-Wan says. She runs a hand through her hair, pulling out the pins that are keeping her braids up.

Anakin chews absently on a fingernail. “So what did you do, Master? I thought Dooku’s drug blocked Force use.”

Obi-Wan drinks some more of her water, which is tepid and with a bitter aftertaste from being recycled through the ship’s water filters. “Dooku may be wise in the ways of the Sith, but he’s forgotten the living Force. But it was dangerous,” she adds.

“You were nearly lost in the Force,” Anakin rebukes.

“Yes.” She turns a hairpin over between her fingers. “I nearly was. Thank you for following me in, I know you’ve never been comfortable with that aspect of the Force.”

“Well, you’re the only Master I have,” Anakin says, trying to make his voice light and failing. “I’d hate to lose you.” _Again_ , neither of them have to say.

Obi-Wan puts the empty glass aside. “I’m sure Master Ki-Adi-Mundi would be glad to take you on again.”

“I’m pretty sure I turned Master Ki off taking a Padawan ever again,” he admits sheepishly; Anakin had been temporarily placed with the Jedi Master while Obi-Wan had been Ventress’s captive. “Or at least that’s the rumor.”

“Nonsense. Master Ki is a very skilled Jedi. Someone else’s Padawan, no matter how stubborn, is not going to turn him off the whole breed.”

Anakin just grins at her.

Obi-Wan flips the hairpin over her knuckles, a little restless. “Besides, most Padawans are far more obedient than you are.”

“Hey, I saved you,” he says indignantly. “Again.”

“For which I am very grateful, of course,” Obi-Wan says, smiling back.

She feels her smile slip a little at the intensity of Anakin’s expression, as he leans forward slightly and says, “So would this be a bad time to have that talk?”

Obi-Wan catches the hairpin between two fingers, barely stopping herself from bending it out of shape. “All right,” she agrees cautiously.

She and Anakin stare at each other, both of them speechless for the moment. Talking about their feelings isn’t exactly a Jedi tradition.

“Uh,” Anakin says eventually, eloquently.

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t know what to say either.

“You know that I – I care about you,” Anakin says eventually. “A lot. And not just because you’re my Master. I’m in love with you. I have been for years. I don’t remember exactly since when, but for years. I didn’t think you’d ever find out. I didn’t want you to, because I knew that nothing would ever come of it, even when I became a Knight and wasn’t your Padawan anymore. I was hoping that it would go away.” He looks down at his hands, blushing furiously. “Do you remember – when I went to Naboo with Padmé, and you followed Jango Fett to Kamino?”

Obi-Wan nods. She can hardly forget; that had begun this whole bloody war.

“I was in love with Padmé,” Anakin says, a little distantly. “Since I was a kid. You knew that. And I thought it was going to be our chance to be together. She said no at first, and then she said yes when she thought we were going to die – this was on Geonosis – and afterwards, when we were on our way back to Naboo, she said that we could –” He makes an indistinct gesture with his right hand. “But we would have to get married. You know her, she’s upper-crust Naboo, they have all those rules – and I was going to say yes.”

“What?” Obi-Wan bursts out, shocked. She’d never known any of this; Padmé has never mentioned it, and Anakin certainly hasn’t. “You’d be breaking the Code! You’d be thrown out of the Order!”

“I know!” Anakin says quickly, scarlet. “I was going to say yes, and then we’d get married and keep it a secret, and when the war was over I could leave the Order to be with her, but then I thought about you and I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t, because then you’d be all alone and you’d _die_ , because I wouldn’t be there to watch your back, and – it would be really awful for Padmé to keep a secret like that. And the Queen would dismiss her if it came out that she’d ¬–” He makes another gesture. “Because of stupid Naboo morals, you know. It’s all right for her to have an affair with a Jedi Knight if she’s a woman, but not to be married to one if he’s a man.”

Obi-Wan supposes she should have seen that coming, but now isn’t really the opportune moment to point out that just because she and Padmé Amidala are friends who have sex on the rare occasion that they’re on the same planet at the same time doesn’t mean that they’re having an affair.

Anakin swallows. “So I said I couldn’t do it. Not like that. And she said she understood, and I dropped her off at the Palace in Theed and then I came back to Coruscant and then we went to war.”

“I see,” Obi-Wan says faintly, and doesn’t ask what this has to do with her. Well, she supposes it explains why Anakin had stopped mooning over Padmé in the aftermath of what had seemed to be a foregone conclusion on Geonosis.

He stares down at his hands. “And I loved you,” he muttered. “Because you were – safe. And I knew you would never – do anything, so it was all right, and you’re all I have anyway, and you’re wonderful and perfect and beautiful, and…I love you. And I don’t expect you to do anything, I know you can’t, or – or won’t – and that’s all right. And I don’t care what Dooku does, or says, or anything. Unless he tells the Council and they throw you out,” he adds. “Then I’m going to kill him.”

Obi-Wan feels her own cheeks heating, speechless for once. Anakin looks up at her hastily, that desperate expression back on his face.

“Anakin,” she says eventually, but doesn’t know what to follow that up with.

She hadn’t thought it was possible for Anakin to go any redder, but he does, until his cheeks are the exact same shade as Master Shaak Ti’s and Obi-Wan is starting to get a bit worried for him. “And I’m really sorry about this morning!” he blurts out. “I shouldn’t have done that, I just – I couldn’t sleep, and you were hurt, and I could barely sense you in the Force, and you said – you said –”

“I said I loved you,” Obi-Wan says, rather distantly even to her own ears, even though she hadn’t said exactly that, now that she thinks about it. It doesn’t matter; Anakin knows what she meant.

“That,” Anakin says. “You said that.” He stares at her desperately. “And now you’re not saying anything.”

“I,” Obi-Wan says, “I don’t really know what to say.” There goes her sobriquet of “The Negotiator,” since she apparently can’t even negotiate her own personal life, or perhaps, lack thereof is a better way to put it.

Anakin stares at her. “I’ve changed my mind,” he decides. “I don’t think we should have this conversation after all.”

“It’s – a little late for that,” Obi-Wan says, and scrubs her hand through her hair before picking her words carefully. “Anakin, I care for you very much, in a manner that is completely inappropriate for a master to have towards her padawan.”

The Force is with her now; Anakin has let his shields lapse slightly, so she hears the thought that he keeps from vocalizing: _I wish you would stop bringing that up._

She folds her hands in her lap, making sure her voice is steady. “I have for some time now. I’m sure my judgment towards you is somewhat compromised, but I will not – I cannot – allow my feelings for you to supersede my duty to the Jedi and the Republic. I hope you understand that.”

Anakin nods, some of the light going out of his eyes. He looks down at his hands again and mumbles, “But you do love me.”

Obi-Wan squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes,” she says, and senses the Force lighting up with Anakin’s intense joy. “Yes, I do love you.”

She opens her eyes again. Anakin is looking at her steadily, his padawan braid falling over his shoulder – he’s leaning forward a little, trying to be closer to her and probably not even aware he’s doing it. “What about Dooku?” he says.

“Well, I’m not in love with him.”

Anakin laughs. “He doesn’t seem like your type.”

“He lacks your youthful charm, it’s true,” Obi-Wan says, and for a moment it’s just that – a joke that they can share together, and not a secret that could destroy them. Then the moment passes.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, feeling tired and far older than her thirty-six years. She fiddles with one of her long braids, her gaze going to the few strands of silver mixed in with the red. “We’re Jedi,” she says finally. “Whatever Dooku thinks he can make us do, it doesn’t matter. We’re Jedi.”

Anakin leans towards her, then away, plucking awkwardly at the knee of his trousers, and Obi-Wan remembers the familiar, comfortable way he’d relaxed against her after Dooku had choked him. Had it truly only been yesterday? “Would it really be that bad?” he mutters. “I mean – what’s wrong with love? Jedi are encouraged to love, to be compassionate, but we’re not allowed to be _in_ love –”

They’ve had this discussion before, but only in theory, never in earnest. Obi-Wan opens her mouth to reply.

“And don’t say the Dark Side,” Anakin adds hastily. “I don’t think Dooku’s ever loved anything in his life.”

“Strong emotions are dangerous for a Jedi,” Obi-Wan says slowly, choosing her words as carefully as she had a few minutes before, when she’d told Anakin she loved him. “We have a great deal of power, both by virtue of our position and our use of the Force. We ought only to wield this power in the exercise of our duties, not for reasons that are compromised by our emotional investment.”

“I _know_ all that,” Anakin says, peevish.

Obi-Wan scrubs a hand over her face, suddenly exhausted. “Think about it this way,” she says instead. “If you had to choose between my life and the Supreme Chancellor’s, whose would you choose?”

Anakin opens his mouth, then closes it. Eventually he says, “Do we still think that the Supreme Chancellor is the second Sith?”

“Senators Amidala or Organa, then.”

“I – both of you,” Anakin says. “Or all three, I don’t know Senator Organa very well, but Padmé likes him.”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan sighs, “that’s not how you make a choice.”

“I don’t like making choices!”

Obi-Wan forbears from saying that she’s known this for the past eleven years. “Could you do it, Anakin? Could you make that choice – between someone you love and the good of the Republic?”

Anakin stares at her. “I don’t know,” he says finally.

Obi-Wan closes her eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted. “That’s why Jedi aren’t permitted to fall in love,” she says, and tries not to think about what she would do in the same situation.

She’s saved from being forced to answer further questions on the subject by the arrival of the medical droid with another dose of Dooku’s drug. Anakin gets it first, scowling and rubbing the place on his arm where he’s been stabbed afterwards, which gives Obi-Wan time to slip into her lightest meditative trance, gathering the Force close around herself in preparation as she turns her back to the security camera. She submits her arm to the needle, keeping her gaze unfocused as she steadies her breathing into the pattern she wants.

Drug administered, the droid deposits a tray with their dinner on it on a counter and trundles off, the door shutting behind it. Dooku isn’t interested in their company tonight, apparently.

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan says steadily, trembling a little with the effort this takes, “find me an empty syringe.”

“Why?”

“Don’t argue!”

Drawers come crashing open as he rummages through them, then slam shut again as he hurries back, holding it out to her. “Why?” he says again.

Obi-Wan draws her right hand away from her left arm, from the spot where the needle had gone in, and following it in the air is a little trickle of pale green liquid, drawn out of her skin drop by drop. Anakin, understanding, jerks the syringe open hastily, and Obi-Wan carefully directs the drug inside it, the drops sliding down the side to pool comfortably at the bottom. Anakin caps it carefully when she’s finished, cradling it in the palm of his hand as he stares down at her.

“I didn’t know you could do that?”

“You know the principle,” Obi-Wan says, taking the syringe from him. “It’s the same as using the Force to keep from ingesting poisonous gases.”

“Well – yeah,” Anakin says, frowns at her, and says, “What are you going to do with it?”

Obi-Wan smiles. “I think Count Dooku could use a taste of his own medicine, don’t you?”


	6. Chapter 6

Obi-Wan is kissing Anakin.

He has one hand fisted tightly in her hair, the other curved around her waist, with his mouth open and eager against hers. Obi-Wan slides her tongue against his, their teeth clashing briefly together before she adjusts the angle, her head tipped back to accommodate Anakin’s height. His padawan braid tickles her shoulder and she curls her hand around it, possessive.

He grins against her mouth. “I love you.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan says, shuddering as he moves his mouth to her neck, his fingers pressing shyly against the strip of skin between her trousers and her loose undershirt. She feels the question in the Force and murmurs back assent, helping Anakin get her shirt off.

He’s seen her naked or nearly naked a thousand times before, so there’s nothing new to see, except that this time he’s looking at her with intent, sliding his fingers curiously up her abdomen to the underside of her breasts. His hands are a lot bigger than Obi-Wan remembers them being from hand-to-hand sparring practice, spanning the small of her back easily. He dips his mouth to her collarbone and licks it, decisively, making Obi-Wan laugh. Anakin gives her a hurt look and Obi-Wan uses her grip on his braid to tilt his head up for another biting kiss, light and teasing.

He’s lost his own shirt somewhere along the way. Obi-Wan takes advantage of this to run her hands up the expanse of tanned skin, feeling the muscle underneath, a few scars from blaster shots and glancing lightsaber blows. Anakin shivers beneath her touch, letting Obi-Wan push him down onto the bed and lean down to kiss him again, her hair falling in a red veil on either side of them, closing them off from the rest of the world. His hands settle comfortably on her waist, steady and familiar, the one flesh and the other body-warm durasteel. Obi-Wan smiles and kisses him again, insistent, their bodies pressed together as their still-clothed legs tangle, the sheets rumpling beneath them.

She closes her eyes, Anakin rolling them over with his hands closing decisively on her wrists. He nuzzles her neck, her shoulder, her breasts, his beard scratching a little at the soft skin, and she makes a soft sound of bemused protest, trying to get her hands free. His grip tightens, pressing her down against the bed, and moves his mouth up against hers again, his tongue plunging in demandingly. Obi-Wan shudders, her hips moving up against his.

It’s the lightsaber calluses – or lack thereof, rather – that tell her something is wrong, not the beard. Anakin’s right hand is durasteel; he shouldn’t have calluses there. Obi-Wan opens her eyes.

Dooku, not Anakin, is pinning her to the bed, kissing her deeply. Obi-Wan panics – wants to panic, wants to push him away and call her lightsaber into her hand, but while her mind is teetering on the edge of hysteria her body is responding to Dooku’s caresses. She hears herself moan as he frees her hands, reaching down to remove her brassiere, helping him get her trousers off. Some distant part of her mind notes that they’re black, rather than her usual off-white. Her discarded shirt is black as well.

Dooku kisses his way down her body, lingering at her now-bare breasts without any of Anakin’s shy hesitation. Obi-Wan’s hands fold themselves into his hair, encouraging him as he presses kisses against her belly, hooking his fingers into her underwear. While Obi-Wan’s mind screams terrified protest, her hips are arching themselves off so that he can peel her underwear off. His beard scratches against her skin as he presses a kiss to her thigh, against the scar he’d made at the Battle of Geonosis. She fists her hands in the sheets, her head falling back, and when she looks up again it’s not Dooku kneeling between her thighs, but Darth Maul, his teeth bared in a grin beneath his red and black features.

Obi-Wan screams.

She fights her way up out of a tangle of sheets, the remnants of the scream still trembling on her lips as Anakin throws himself out of his own bed and towards her. “Master, what is it? Are you all right?”

She scrubs her hands furiously across her mouth, across her clothed thighs, and finally forces them to shuddering stillness. “I’m fine,” she manages.

Anakin’s hands hover worriedly over her. “You haven’t done that in years,” he says finally.

For years after Qui-Gon had died, Obi-Wan had had nightmares about the duel in Theed. She knows she should have exorcised Maul’s ghost when she killed him, but he’d haunted her dreams anyway, a thousand ways the duel could have gone – better, worse, the same, over and over again. She’d thought that they had finally passed.

She twists her single long braid around her wrist, remembering how the dream had begun and not wanting to meet his eyes. “It’s nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

“I’m fine,” Obi-Wan says, glancing up as the door slides open. “It was only a nightmare.”

“Your nightmare’s just beginning, Kenobi,” Tol Skorr announces, standing aside as Dooku comes in, followed by Quinlan Vos.

Obi-Wan and Anakin turn towards them, Obi-Wan calling the syringe into her hand and slipping it quickly into her pocket. She doesn’t think any of the others notice, and covers the movement by reaching down to pull her boots on.

“What do you want?” Anakin demands, shifting into a defensive position.

Dooku ignores him. “General Fisto’s fleet has been in orbit around Dac for two weeks now,” he announces. “Several hours ago his fleet went into hyperspace and vanished. General Choi’s fleet was diverted en route to Poltara and has also vanished. Where are they, General Kenobi?”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan says calmly, even though her heart leaps at the words. “I’ve been here for the past several days; it’s possible that new intelligence came in that I haven’t been privy to as your prisoner.”

“Where are Kit Fisto and Tsui Choi, General?”

“I don’t know,” she repeats.

“Aayla Secura, Adi Gallia, Sian Jeisel, and Stass Allie have also left their commands, apparently at the order of the Jedi Council,” Dooku goes on. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan says decisively. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. I am wondering about your sources, though.”

Dooku tips his head towards Skorr. “Time’s up, General Kenobi. Take them both down to interrogation.”

Skorr grins, showing his teeth. “With pleasure, Master.”

He jerks Obi-Wan to her feet, pulling her arms around behind her back to cuff them. Quinlan does the same with Anakin, and the two of them are propelled out into the hallway, where an escort of battle droids and two magnaguards are waiting.

Dooku follows them down the corridor to an elevator. “You can still save your padawan, Master Kenobi. Tell me what you know of the Republic’s plans.”

“No.”

“What about you, Skywalker?”

“No,” Anakin says flatly.

“I see we’ll have to use an alternative means of persuasion,” Dooku remarks as they wait for the elevator.

“You won’t get anything out of us, Dooku,” Anakin snaps. “We’re Jedi. We’re trained to resist torture.”

“That will just make this more fun,” Skorr sneers.

Quinlan, Obi-Wan notices, doesn’t say anything at all. His face is completely expressionless, and Obi-Wan wonders if he even has an opinion on the subject. If Aayla’s with the fleet that she’s sure has been sent to intercept them, then she’ll be able to reach him. Aayla Secura had been Quinlan’s Padawan; they’re as close as any former Master and Padawan that Obi-Wan knows, and closer than most.

The elevator dings open, a rather incongruous sound in the midst of a warship, and the droids steer Anakin and Obi-Wan inside, followed by Vos, Skorr, and Dooku. It’s a tight fit; Obi-Wan might have tried to go for Skorr’s lightsaber if Dooku hadn’t been there, but two against three plus the droids aren’t good odds, even for Jedi. Even for her and Anakin.

She watches the elevator tick downwards, Anakin restless and tense at her shoulder. She can feel the Force gathered close around her, hopes that it’s tucked carefully enough beneath her skin that Dooku or the others don’t notice anything amiss. The syringe, with the capped hypodermic needle attached, is a light weight in her pocket; Obi-Wan is waiting for the Force to tell her when to use it. She’d helped Anakin purge the drug from his system last night after the med droid had left, both of them in trance so he could use the little bit of the Force still left to him to free the remainder of it. For all that he’s mad and a little reckless – all right, extremely reckless – Anakin has more combat skill than Knights twice his age, and Obi-Wan is certain that she and he together are perfectly capable of taking on Vos and Skorr, with or without their lightsabers. Dooku – well, to go up against Dooku, they’re going to want lightsabers.

Eventually the elevator deposits them into a corridor that looks exactly the same as the one they’d just left. They’re steered right, the droids in formation around them and Skorr leading the way, Vos striding alongside Obi-Wan and Dooku following them, his gaze hard on the back of Obi-Wan’s neck, sharp with the Force.

They’ve been walking for five minutes when the entire ship shakes and Dooku’s comlink makes an urgent sound. He flicks it on and barks, “Why have we just left hyperspace? We’re still hours away from Serenno!” before the droid on the other end can get more than a few syllables out.

“Sir, a Republic fleet has just intercepted us!” the droid says. “We were forced out of hyperspace to avoid a collision. They’ve left hyperspace as well and are now moving to surround us. Orders, sir?”

Dooku turns on Obi-Wan. “How did you do this?” he demands.

Obi-Wan just smiles. “I think I’ve found Kit Fisto and his fleet for you.”

For a heartbeat, she thinks he’s going to strike her. Force lightning glitters at his fingertips; Obi-Wan draws in her breath, trying to prepare herself to absorb it if she has to, but instead Dooku drops his hand and strides away, calling over his shoulder, “Secure these two and meet me on the bridge.”

“Yes, Master,” Skorr says. To the droids, he says, “You heard him, get moving.”

They start walking again. Anakin says, “You know that the Jedi are coming for us.”

“Shut up, Skywalker,” he snaps.

“They’re coming, and when they get here you’re going to be arrested and tried for high treason, which trust me, you’re not going to enjoy,” Anakin says, getting into the swing of things. “You used to be a Jedi, so you’ll be tried by the Jedi Council for crimes against civilization. We don’t deal too kindly on that these days. You probably think the Jedi are weak, so it might not seem like much of a threat, but –”

“Shut up, Skywalker!” Skorr says, whirling on him and raising his hand to strike.

“Stop it!” Quinlan says, grabbing his wrist. “The Count said to take them to holding, so that’s what we’ll do. We –”

The comms system in the ship crackles. All of them, droids included, look up as a familiar voice came over the intercom. “This is Jedi General Kit Fisto. We have you surrounded. You are ordered to immediately surrender and prepare to be boarded. Release the prisoners General Obi-Wan Kenobi and Commander Anakin Skywalker.”

Anakin is kept from snapping, “Ha!” in Skorr’s face only by Obi-Wan nudging him with the Force. She turns her attention on the Dark Jedi and says, “Release us and I’ll speak for you before the Council of Reconciliation.”

He sneers at her. “No.”

“You heard General Fisto: the Republic has this ship surrounded. You won’t be able to make a break for hyperspace. You were a Jedi once, Skorr. You know what it’s like to touch serenity. You can still come back from the Dark Side, I can sense it. You –”

“Keep walking, Kenobi.” He unhooks his lightsaber from his belt. “Dooku said he wanted you alive, but he didn’t say anything about being in one piece.”

The droids titter uncertainly, looking around for orders. Quin tries to push Skorr’s arm away. “This isn’t the time –”

“Quin,” Obi-Wan says, “we’ve always been friends. You don’t have to follow Dooku. You’re still a Jedi. You can come back.”

“Don’t listen to the bitch, Vos,” Skorr snaps, igniting his lightsaber. “¬If you fall for that you’re as weak as I always thought you were.”

Quinlan glances at him, taking his lightsaber off his belt. “Skorr –”

“I felt it inside you yesterday, Quin,” Obi-Wan says, talking quickly to cover the sound of Skorr’s rebuttals. “You don’t have to follow Dooku. You have to follow the path he’s chosen. The Dark Side of the Force does not rule you. I don’t know why you joined the Confederacy, but it can’t be worth your soul. No one will make you fight for the Republic, Quin, just don’t do this for Dooku. Think about what you’re being asked to do – torture a Jedi, torture a Padawan; you are not that man, Quin. I know you, and I know there is no evil in your spirit –”

His lightsaber moves blindingly fast, a figure-eight of flashing red that burns across Obi-Wan’s vision even after her binders have fallen off her wrists. Skorr shouts in rage, but she’s already moving, her heel snapping up against his chin and sending him into a backflip as droids scatter. Quin and Anakin, his binders cut, are moving amongst them, leaving scrap metal in their wake.

Obi-Wan ducks Skorr’s swing, kicking aside his saber arm and angling a punch against his jaw. He blocks it, his lightsaber swinging back towards her, and Obi-Wan flings herself backwards, turning head over heels in midair and landing flat-footed, her fists up in preparation. Skorr swings his lightsaber around, striding towards her, and Obi-Wan launches herself off the floor, bouncing sideways off the wall to slam her right foot against his jaw, sending him sprawling sideways briefly before he recovers himself. Obi-Wan bounces back to her feet, already moving upwards with another kick that slides in past his guard, and shoves him back a step before he recovers. He shouts and thrusts at her. Instinct makes Obi-Wan throw her hand out, the Force sending him sprawling backwards amongst the droid parts as Anakin batters a battle droid to scrap with his bare hands and Quin duels with a magnaguard. Skorr flips back on his feet, face twisted in hatred as he advances again, his free hand raising and closing into a fist.

The Force lifts her up off her feet, toes barely skimming the floor as Obi-Wan scrabbles a hand at her throat, struggling to breathe past the grasp of the Force around her. She flings her hand out, which makes the grasp loosen as Skorr puts his energy towards blocking her. Both their palms flatten in thin air, the Force struggling between them and bowing out the walls on either side of them. Skorr’s lightsaber deactivates, unnecessary at the moment. Obi-Wan is stronger in the Force than he is naturally, but he has the Dark Side.

Obi-Wan has serenity, and she reaches for it, lets the Force flow through her as she reaches out again, closes her fist, and _twists_. Skorr shouts and collapses, the pressure between them gone.

“You bitch!” he shouts as Obi-Wan approaches, his voice echoing through the long metal corridor. Neither his hands nor his legs move, unprotesting as she stretches her hand out and calls his lightsaber to her. “So you _do_ have a Dark Side ¬–”

Anakin shoots the last battle droid in the head with a stolen blaster just as Quin slices the second magnaguard in two. “What did you do?” Anakin demands, looking down at Skorr.

“I broke his spine,” Obi-Wan says, and spares a fleeting worry for how close that is to what Darksiders do. “He’ll live to face trial, but he’ll never hold a lightsaber again.”

“You Jedi witch!”

Anakin kneels down and presses a finger to his forehead. “Sleep,” he orders, the Force behind it. Skorr’s eyes close immediately.

“How did you know I’d help you?” Quin asks, deactivating his lightsaber.

Obi-Wan smiles at him. “I suppose I just had faith,” she says.

She glances around at the wreckage in the hallway. “Kit and the others are on their way,” she says unnecessarily. “Quin, go secure the hangar bays for them, see if you can get on the comm to Master Fisto or Master Secura and let them know the situation. Anakin, find the droid control chamber and deactivate the battle droids and vulture droids. Try and find our lightsabers.”

“I think being a general has gone to your head,” Quin says lightly.

“Where are you going?” Anakin demands, more urgently.

Obi-Wan raises Skorr’s lightsaber. It’s bigger and a little heavier than hers is, designed for a man’s hands, but none of that really matters; she’s trained with Anakin’s lightsaber before and it had been Qui-Gon’s that she had used to kill Maul. It’s far better than no lightsaber at all.

“I’m going after Dooku,” she says.

*

Anakin, who after nearly twelve years as her padawan still lacks a certain amount of respect for her position as his master, tells her that she’s insane, she can’t possibly mean to go after Dooku on her own. Then he adds something about Asajj Ventress.

“Ventress left,” Quinlan informs them, swinging his lightsaber hilt idly in his hand as they walk back towards the elevator. “Dooku sent her after some weapons manufacturer on Geonosis.”

“You don’t have a lightsaber,” Obi-Wan tells Anakin.

“I can take –”

Quin’s hand closes decisively on his lightsaber. “No, you can’t. Obi-Wan, your Padawan is right –”

“All I’m going to do is keep him from running long enough for Kit and the others to get here and arrest him,” Obi-Wan says. “Which will be easier if we stop delaying!” She jabs impatiently at the elevator controls.

“The last time you dueled with Dooku he would have killed you if I wasn’t there!” Anakin tries again.

The elevator arrives and the three of them step inside, Anakin’s hand closing on Obi-Wan’s sleeve as Quin hits the controls. “Let me come with you,” he orders. “You need me.”

“I need you to disable the vulture droids so that the boarding party can land,” Obi-Wan says, all too aware of Quinlan’s curious gaze on them as the elevator shoots upwards. “We don’t have much time. The fleet will –”

The starship shudders as a hit makes it through the shields.

“– will try and disable the hyperdrive, but they don’t want to destroy the ship unless they have to, not with three Jedi and Count Dooku onboard. So you have to make sure the boarding party can make it through,” Obi-Wan finishes, putting her hand against the wall to catch her balance as the ship shakes again.

“Master Vos can do that,” Anakin argues. “You’re still hurt.”

“And you don’t have a lightsaber,” Obi-Wan snaps.

“I’ve got a blaster,” he says, hefting it.

“You know, you two argued a whole lot less when we were out on the Rim together before the war,” Quinlan observes.

“I like to pretend my padawan respected me then,” Obi-Wan grumbles, glancing at the elevator controls.

“I respect you!” Anakin protests. He sets his mouth stubbornly and his voice goes soft as he adds, “The last time I let you out of my sight during a battle I spent three weeks thinking you were dead and you spent three weeks chained to Asajj Ventress’s ceiling. And I can’t – I can’t do that again.”

Obi-Wan really wishes that Quinlan was anywhere else in the galaxy right now. She’s saved from Anakin making another declaration of undying passion – in front of a witness who’s perfectly capable of testifying in front of the Jedi Council this time – by the elevator coming to a stop, the door sliding open. Obi-Wan launches herself out of it and uses the Force to close the doors before Anakin can follow her.

And just like that, she’s alone on Count Dooku’s battle cruiser.

Skorr’s lightsaber hilt is warm against her palm. Obi-Wan grips it tightly, closing her eyes and reaching out with the Force to find Dooku. There are droids between them – battle droids, coming towards her. Obi-Wan doesn’t know if they’ve been sent to recapture her or not; doesn’t particularly care. She ignites Skorr’s lightsaber, the red blade sending strange shadows sliding across the floor in front of her, and steps out into the corridor.

“There she is!” cries a battle droid. “Set for stun and shoot her!”

Obi-Wan deflects the bolts easily. Deflected stun blasts don’t have any effect on droids, unfortunately, but that doesn’t matter; Obi-Wan throws the lightsaber and tosses herself into a backflip, blaster bolts skimming beneath her until she lands back on her feet, the hilt of Skorr’s lightsaber thudding solidly back into her palm. Six battle droids collapse in disassembled parts on the floor; the seventh squawks in alarm and takes off down the hallway, Obi-Wan in hot pursuit. She slices it in two before it’s gone more than three steps, kicking the parts out of her way

The door to the bridge is just beyond it. Obi-Wan flicks her fingers at it hopefully, but the blast doors are down and the Force won’t do anything against that without more energy than she really cares to expend. Instead she stops, reaching for the Force, and thrusts her lightsaber into the door up to the hilt. She can feel the heat shearing off it as she slowly carves a hole in the blast doors, using the Force to help the resistance of the triple layers of durasteel. If Dooku had ever considered that the Jedi might get this close to him, he would have added cortosis in. Obi-Wan is glad he hadn’t.

Hole cut, she stands back and shoves with the Force, sending the sheared-off section spinning across the bridge. Droids shout and scatter in its wake and Dooku turns around slowly, calling his lightsaber into his hand.

“Very impressive, Master Kenobi,” he observes.

Obi-Wan points the lightsaber at him. “Count Dooku, you’re under arrest in the name of the Jedi Council and the Galactic Republic for high treason and crimes against civilization.” She doesn’t pause as she slices a magnaguard’s head off, kicking a battle droid out of the way, and using the Force to fling two more against a wall, stunning them. “Will you come peacefully?”

Outside the transparisteel windows Obi-Wan can see Republic ships ringing the cruiser, the flashes of blasterfire as starfighters clash with vulture droids. She glances at the battle once, then turns her attention back to Dooku as she slices her way through two more magnaguards, knocking aside their electrostaffs and kicking one out of the way.

Dooku ignites his lightsaber. “Dare I ask what you’ve done with Skorr? I take it he’s no longer among the living.”

Obi-Wan brings Skorr’s lightsaber up into the opening position for her favored lightsaber form of Soresu – blade held back in one hand, non-dominant hand out so that she can channel the Force through it. “Oh, he’s alive,” she says. “He’s just not very happy.”

“Uh, orders, sir?” one of the remaining droids inquires timidly, cowering behind a control.

“Get us into hyperspace,” Dooku snaps, not looking at it. He and Obi-Wan move towards each other, stepping over droid parts. “You cannot defeat me, Master Kenobi. We’ve ascertained this.”

“I don’t need to defeat you,” Obi-Wan say, letting herself smile, a small, savage expression. Anakin would appreciate it. Qui-Gon wouldn’t have. “I just need to keep you occupied until the rest of the Jedi get here.”

“Do you,” Dooku says. “And I suppose the Jedi Council doesn’t care about the second Sith Lord?”

“It’s Supreme Chancellor Palpatine,” Obi-Wan says. “Isn’t it?”

He blinks once, slow. “You’re not as dull as I thought, Master Kenobi.”

Obi-Wan just feels cold. She knows her history; few Sith Lords are content to watch and wait and manipulate from the sidelines the way that Palpatine has done. She has to get back to Coruscant so that they can warn the Council and remove him from power as quietly as possible.

But first she has to do this.

She feels the shift in the Force, the faint tremor along her skin, and isn’t taken by surprise as Dooku uses the Force to fling the remnants of three battle droids at her; Obi-Wan throws them back at him and uses the momentary confusion this causes – the remaining droids still in a state of some panic – to launch herself up into a smooth flip that covers the distance between them. Dooku’s lightsaber arcs up to meet hers as she touches down, plasma hissing close enough that it singes the bottom of Obi-Wan’s braid as she whirls round, snapping a kick against his knee that momentarily unbalances him before he counters her. Lightsabers crackle as Dooku slowly, inexorably herds her the way he wants them both to go.

Obi-Wan is younger and faster, but Dooku has height and reach on her – not usually a problem when Obi-Wan has spent her entire life training with men bigger and stronger than she is, first with Qui-Gon, then with Anakin, but a definite disadvantage when she’s wounded and tiring more quickly than usual. Worse, Dooku knows it.

“You are a worthy opponent, Master Kenobi,” he observes, sounding approving as Obi-Wan parries one of his strikes into a console, sending sparks flaring up between them. “If only you were at your prime. You’ve certainly improved since the last time we crossed blades.”

Obi-Wan snaps a kick up against his jaw and almost loses her foot for her trouble, parrying aside his lightsaber at the last second. “I’ve been training for this,” she says.

“Er, sir?” one of the few remaining droids interrupts tremulously. “Two Jedi have just landed in the starboard hangar bay and –” Its voice stops abruptly as it keels slowly over, at the same time the other droids deactivate.

Obi-Wan lets herself smile. Anakin’s doing.

Dooku takes advantage of her momentary distraction to hit a control that opens a hatch in the floor. He leaps down it and Obi-Wan follows, bringing her lightsaber up just in time to block the lightning crackling off the tips of Dooku’s fingers as he twists around. They’re sliding down a long, curving escape shaft. Of course Dooku has a bolt hole. Obi-Wan had expected nothing less. He always needs to have some way to slither out.

“Qui-Gon told me you were stubborn,” he remarks, as if they’re in a training arena and not on a ship under siege. “It was one of the things he liked about you. But a Jedi needs to know when to let go.”

“Oh, something the Sith excel at, I’m sure,” Obi-Wan shoots back. She sees light up ahead: the end of the shaft.

Dooku hits the floor with both feet; Obi-Wan turns her descent into a mid-air roll, snapping her lightsaber downwards and having it deflected. She lands behind Dooku, taking in their location quickly. Portside hangar bay; she can see Dooku’s solar sailer sloop waiting for him, alongside several deactivated battle droids and three unfortunately active magnaguards. Upon seeing Obi-Wan, these activate their electrostaffs and start towards her.

She shoves them backwards with the Force, whirling into an attack on Dooku. He blocks every blow, sneering at her from behind the clashing red blades.

“You’re weak, Kenobi!” he says. “And weakening with every minute that passes. Give up – give in – and join me.”

“Never!” She knocks his lightsaber aside, snapping a kick up into his jaw as she slides inside his guard, starting to reach for the syringe in her pocket until a blast of Force energy knocks her backwards, Skorr’s lightsaber flying out of her hand and deactivating when it hits the deck. Obi-Wan throws herself into a series of desperate backflips to avoid a barrage of blasterfire from a newly arrived pair of droidekas that apparently hadn’t been hooked into the same central command as the others.

Obi-Wan knows that it had been a mistake as soon as she does it, feeling the new skin over the blaster wounds on her stomach stretch and tear. She lands in a graceless sprawl on the floor near the magnaguards, which are stumbling upright, electrostaffs whirling by her head. She rolls aside to avoid an electrostaff that jabs down at her, grabbing for the handle as she shoves the droid backwards with the Force and pulls the staff towards her, flipping to her feet and whirling the staff between her hands. Glancing quickly over her shoulder, she can see Dooku beating a hasty retreat to his ship and grabs for the Force, using it to toss two of the magnaguards into their master. Dooku goes sprawling, the droids on top of him before he shoves them aside. Obi-Wan slams the electrostaff into the vulnerable chest of the remaining magnaguard, sending it into convulsions that shake its entire body, then flips the electrostaff around to knock it to its knees, using the Force to burn out its wiring and leave it a useless pile of scrap metal on the floor.

The droidekas are moving again, shields down as they roll towards her. Obi-Wan reaches out with her free hand and calls Skorr’s lightsaber into it. She can feel the first tremors of exhaustion settling in, the aftereffects of pushing herself too hard and too fast when she’s still healing, recovering from the kind of trance that takes energy away instead of restoring it. The throbbing pain on her torso where her wounds have broken open don’t help. She knows she won’t last much longer; so does Dooku.

She tosses the electrostaff aside, settling into position with both hands on the hilt of her lightsaber. “Aren’t you going to run away again, Count?”

“What a Sith you’ll make, Master Kenobi,” Dooku says, admiring. He tips his head at his remaining magnaguards, the ones that Obi-Wan had thrown at him. “Bring her alive.”

The only relief that offers is that it means it will keep him here for a few more minutes. Obi-Wan licks her lips, tasting her own blood where she must have cut herself on her teeth, and challenges, “Come and get me yourself, Dooku.”

A flicker of movement in the observatory platform above and a tremor in the Force warns her in the instant before the window explodes outwards with a terrific crash, shards of transparisteel raining down around them as Anakin vaults down, landing in a three-point crouch with his lightsaber held out in one hand. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to hit girls?” he quips, rising smoothly. He unclips Obi-Wan’s lightsaber from his belt and tosses it to her. She catches it and ignites it, a lightsaber in each hand now.

“So the apprentice comes running to his master,” Dooku says. He flicks his fingers at the battle droids, turning away and starting up the gangway to his ship. “Another time, Obi-Wan.”

“Can you take care of this?” Obi-Wan demands of Anakin, dragging up the last dregs of her strength.

“Yes –”

“Catch!” She tosses Skorr’s lightsaber at him and leaps – clean, beautiful. Qui-Gon would be proud.

Dooku meets her lightsaber thrust with one of his own, turning on the ramp to catch her in midair with the Force. Obi-Wan gags and chokes, fumbling her free hand into her pocket as her lightsaber deactivates. It hits the deck with a clunk, the sound almost lost in the ear-piercing screech of two Jedi starfighters and a gunship skidding into the hangar.

Dooku glances at them, irritation briefly creasing his features before he throws Obi-Wan sideways through the hatch. She lands on her back and flips herself onto her feet again, launching herself gracelessly at Dooku and tackling him back down the ramp.

“Obi-Wan!” she hears Anakin scream.

“Not wise, Master Kenobi,” Dooku says, punching her in the face.

Obi-Wan slams the hypodermic needle into his neck and depresses the plunger. “You forgot wisdom when you left the Order, Dooku!”

Dooku goes white as the drug takes hold of him, but the shock only stalls him for a moment. He throws Obi-Wan off him, sending her tumbling into Anakin as Aayla Secura and Kit Fisto circle Dooku, their lightsabers extended, followed by a dozen clone troopers.

“Count Dooku, you are under arrest,” says Kit as several clones drag Dooku up, slapping binders onto his wrists. “Put him in a holding cell until we can transport him back to the cruiser.” He grins at Obi-Wan and Anakin as Aayla comes over to help them up. “Good job, you two. Hey, get a medic over here for General Kenobi!”

“Masters Vos, Gallia, and Tholme are securing the rest of the ship,” Anakin reports, helping Obi-Wan to a seat on the ramp.

Aayla holds Obi-Wan’s lightsaber out to her. “Are you all right, Master Kenobi?”

“Better now,” Obi-Wan says, taking it. “What took you all so long?” she adds, and grins.


	7. Chapter 7

“– so we followed your tracking beacon here after Adi, Aayla, and Tholme rendezvoused with the fleet,” Kit Fisto finishes, leaning against the holocomm. “General Tsui Choi and several other masters were initially dispatched to cover the hyperspace routes to Lola Sayu, but when we picked up the signal I believe they returned to their initial destinations.”

“What tracking beacon?” Obi-Wan blinks. Swathed in a Jedi cloak borrowed from Adi Gallia, she’s a more familiar sight than she had been in civvies; Anakin finds that his gaze slides automatically away from her instead of letting himself look the way he’s been doing the past few days. They’re Jedi again; he’s not allowed either to look or to want.

Master Fisto cocks his head to one side curiously. “You didn’t set it off?”

“Quin –?” Obi-Wan starts, glancing across the room, but Vos is already shaking his head. “Anakin,” she adds, more certain. “What did you do?”

“I told you I was making that cleaning droid better,” he says, tilting his head back to grin up at her.

She just shakes her head, smiling back down at him. “You’re unbelievable.”

“You made a tracking beacon out of a cleaning droid?” says Fisto’s Padawan, a Mon Calamari named Nahdar Vebb. He blinks down at Anakin from the holocomm, impressed. “One that worked in hyperspace? I didn’t know that was possible.”

“Well, I didn’t say it was easy,” Anakin says, preening a little before he catches a faint hint of disapproval from Obi-Wan. Jedi aren’t exactly supposed to be humble, but they’re not supposed to be too proud either. Anakin frankly thinks a little pride is justified, but he’s not going to say as much.

He feels vindicated when Aayla Secura pulls herself out from beneath the nav consoles to say, “I don’t know anyone else in the Order who could have pulled that off. Good work, Skywalker.”

“Thank you, Master Secura,” Anakin says, leaning back against Obi-Wan’s knee from his cross-legged seat on the floor.

Obi-Wan’s fight with Dooku has left the bridge mostly wrecked except for a few cowering battle droids who had been dragged out and swiftly disposed of, but somewhat to Anakin’s surprise it’s still fully functional. Master Secura and several of the clones have been occupied in fixing the worst of the damage and getting the hyperdrive back online; no use in wasting a good ship. Dooku’s death won’t end the war, but having a CIS battle cruiser on their side might help them get behind enemy lines to do some good old-fashioned sabotage, among other things that Anakin can think of.

Aside from Adi Gallia, who’s guarding Count Dooku down below, all seven Jedi onboard the cruiser are up on the bridge here now. It’s the kind of number that feels excessive for a single mission a year and a half into the war, though Anakin has to remind himself that he and Obi-Wan had been the objective of the mission, while Vos had been a wild card, so really it’s just four Jedi who’d actually been sent out. Five if you count Fisto’s Padawan back on the Republic cruiser. It’s still a large number in a war where increasingly Jedi are only dispatched to battleground planets in ones and twos because there are so many systems in conflict that the Order is hard-pressed to keep up. The Council probably wouldn’t have spared so many if it wasn’t for the chance to capture Count Dooku himself; Obi-Wan and Anakin alone aren’t worth the risk in lives without tactical merit.

It turns out that Quinlan Vos had been sent deep undercover to spy for the Jedi by the Council and his old master, Tholme. Anakin is frankly of the opinion that going so deep undercover that your own side can’t tell if you’ve really gone to the Dark Side or not is a risky way to fight a war, especially when it gets senators killed and Jedi hurt, but there’s a reason he and Obi-Wan are usually assigned to combat or diplomacy, not intelligence. The Jedi spymaster’s tactics aren’t ones he likes, but Tholme and his protégées seem fine with it. Vos and his former master are talking now, sitting on the floor in a relatively undamaged portion of the bridge. Aayla goes to join them as Tholme beckons her over, leaving her toolkit on the floor.

“What about the Supreme Chancellor?” Obi-Wan asks, carding her fingers through her loose hair before she starts separating it into strands to braid. “Dooku as much as admitted he was the second Sith –”

“Dooku lies,” Vos snaps, glancing over at the sound of the count’s name.

“Dooku may lie, but you have to admit it makes sense,” Obi-Wan says. “Did you report my suspicions to the Council, Kit?”

“Master Windu is taking care of it personally,” Kit says, frowning at the holocomm. He taps it with one long green finger. “It’s a grave charge, but you’re right. It does make sense when you think about it.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Anakin protests half-heartedly. “It sounds like a Separatist trick to tear the Republic apart further – I mean, for the love of – he’s the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic! There are Jedi around him all the time, surely we would know if a Dark Lord of the Sith was right there on Coruscant!”

Obi-Wan and Fisto trade meaningful looks over his head. Anakin glances up at the holo image of Vebb, and they exchange the more or less traditional shrug of _Masters. They just don’t understand!_ He suspects that it’s identical to the gesture that Obi-Wan and Fisto are sharing, only upgraded to _Padawans! They just don’t understand!_

“Masters, it’s crazy,” Anakin tries again. “I’ve known Palpatine since I was a child. He’s always been a good friend to me – he only wants what’s best for the Republic! If he was a Sith, that would be utterly mad. Why would he – it’s crazy.”

“It’s the kind of crazy only a Sith Lord would engage in,” Tholme remarks from the opposite side of the room. “Once the option has been put on the table, it is rather disturbingly likely. And what Quinlan has just told me confirms that, as well as Obi-Wan’s report about her interactions with Dooku. Though the Count’s not talking now.”

Anakin scrubs his hands through his hair. “This is crazy,” he repeats, hearing the dullness in his voice. It doesn’t make sense except in all the ways it does.

Obi-Wan strokes a hand over the back of his neck. “Be calm, my young apprentice,” she says. “The truth will be discovered soon enough, and until we can contact Coruscant, there’s nothing we can do about it. Have faith in Master Windu.”

Anakin closes his eyes, leaning back against Obi-Wan’s hand. “Yes, Master,” he says obediently. “I just – I just don’t think it’s very likely.”

“I know, my young Padawan.” She glances up at Kit. “Why haven’t we reported in to the Council yet? Dooku’s capture is the first real break we’ve gotten in this war.”

“I’m having some trouble getting through to Coruscant,” Fisto admits, frowning at the holocomm and tapping it again.

Anakin starts to stand up. “Let me take a look at it –”

“No, it’s functional,” Fisto says, waving him back to his seat. “There’s just no one on the other end. Let me trying reaching Master Yoda or Master Windu directly.” He leans over the holocomm again, then stops, his hand going to his forehead.

Anakin feels it too, a heartbeat after Obi-Wan’s sharp indrawn breath. She doubles over with her hand pressed to her heart, her hair falling in loose waves around her face. Anakin scrambles up to put a hand on her back, feeling the sudden yawning void in the Force – a darkness that threatens to consume all of them. Obi-Wan’s shoulder is comfortingly warm against his palm as he says, “Master?” hearing the panic in his own voice.

“The living Force is screaming,” she gasps.

Tholme, Aayla, and Vos are all on their feet. Even Vebb looks shaken, his hand fallen to his lightsaber. “Master?” he questions of Fisto.

“A great disturbance in the Force,” Tholme says, leaning over his cane.

“Dooku,” Vos spits, clenching his lightsaber in his fist. “I’ll gut him this time –”

Anakin glances across the bridge as a flicker of blue light catches his attention – Aayla’s clone commander, who’s just turned his palm over to activate the small handheld holocomm attached to the control gauntlet on clone armor. The Force nudges Anakin towards him, an insistent whisper at the back of his mind; he leaves Obi-Wan behind and edges around the captain’s chair, where Commander Bly won’t see him. None of the other Jedi appear to notice his distraction.

Behind him, he hears Vebb say, “What is it, Commander?” and whirls at the sound of blasterfire. Fisto cries out as his padawan falls, his lightsaber still on his belt in the instant before the holocomm blinks out, leaving Fisto leaning on the console with horror chasing its way across his usually cheerful features. “Nahdar!”

“Execute Order 66,” says the figure in the palm of Commander Bly’s hand.

“It will be done, my lord,” says Bly, pulling his blaster from his holster as the comm flickers out.

“No!” Anakin yells, grabbing with the Force and throwing Bly into the nearest wall.

“Skywalker!” Aayla shouts, jerking around. “What are you –”

Vos tackles her to the floor as Bly comes up shooting, the other clones on the bridge joining in. Anakin snatches his lightsaber off his belt as Obi-Wan ignites hers, parrying blaster bolts. There aren’t many clones up here; for six Jedi it’s only a matter of seconds before they’re all dead. All except for Bly, whom Aayla and Vos pin to the floor, kicking his blaster away from him.

“Kit, get to Adi!” Obi-Wan warns, and the Nautolan Jedi nods once and races off, his lightsaber bright in his hand.

She and Anakin cross to the others. Tholme is leaning on his cane and crouching down in front of Bly, holding one hand out. “You want to tell us why you did this,” he says, his voice thick with compulsion.

“Orders,” Bly chokes out. “We were ordered to execute Order 66.”

Anakin crouches down beside Tholme. “What’s Order 66?” he asks. “Tell us!”

“Contingency Order 66,” Bly recites. “In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander, GAR commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander until a new command structure is established.”

Vos curses. “Who’s the Supreme Commander?”

“The Supreme Chancellor,” Obi-Wan says, looking ill. “It’s Chancellor Palpatine. The message must have been coded and verified as coming directly from him.”

“I heard him,” Anakin says. “You can check his holocomm.” He breathes in, anger making him clench his fists. “It was the Supreme Chancellor. It was Palpatine.”

Aayla passes a hand over her face. “All this time we’ve served together, Bly –”

Bly’s comlink crackles. “CC-5052, can you confirm that Order 66 has been executed?” another clone asks.

“No,” Bly chokes out before anyone can stop him. “Terminate this ship!”

Vos slams his head into the deck, knocking him out, but it’s too late. Through the observation window Anakin can see the Republic cruisers turning their guns on the Sep dreadnaught. He throws himself at the nearest working console, his fingers flying over the controls as he brings up the cruiser’s partially intact shields.

“Anakin, can we make the jump to hypserspace?” Obi-Wan demands, leaning over his shoulder.

“I don’t – navig computer’s down, but lightspeed is operational –”

The ship shakes with the first hit, throwing Obi-Wan forward against Anakin. She catches herself on the console, her hair falling into his face. “Then get us out of here,” she orders. “The rest of the fleet is coming around, we can’t hold them off for long even if we start shooting back. If we give them too long they’ll box us in so that we can’t make the jump to hyperspace.”

“Jump _blind_?” Anakin demands, horrified. “We could end up in a sun!”

“And they’ll blow us to bits if we stay here much longer,” Tholme snaps. “Trust the Forcce, Skywalker, and jump!”

Anakin swallows, reaching for the control.

“It will be all right, Anakin,” Obi-Wan says, her breath warm against his cheek as the ship shakes again. “Trust in the Force.”

“Yes, Master,” Anakin says, reaching for the serenity of the Force, and pulls the handle down.

He feels the third and fourth hits glance off the ship, but by then they’re gone. Anakin sinks back in his seat for a moment, breathing hard in relief that they haven’t vaporized instantly, though that doesn’t mean they won’t in the next ten minutes. He only gives himself that instant, though, before he turns towards the navig computer, which had only mostly been pulverized by someone’s lightsaber, and starts trying to figure out how to reconstruct it. If he’s working, if he’s busy and his mind is elsewhere, then he doesn’t have to think about the enormity of what must have happened. Thousands of Jedi in the galaxy serving with clone troopers on thousands of planets. Thousands of Jedi dead, murdered by their own troops. Without that second’s warning from the Force, they might all be dead too.

“Commander Fil’s dead,” he hears Kit Fisto report, and glances up to see him helping Adi Gallia onto the bridge. Aayla goes to help her to a seat, calling the medkit over to her and pulling out a bacta patch. “None of the other clones apparently received the command, but I’m ordering them to turn over their weapons until we know more. What did your commander say?”

Aayla and Tholme explain what they know while Vos manhandles Bly’s limp body out of the bridge. Obi-Wan sits on the floor beside Anakin and passes him tools as he asks for them, both of them swearing when wires send sparks flying into their faces. “Thanks a _lot_ , Master,” Anakin quips, because it’s easier to joke than it is to think of what had happened – what’s still happening, because he can feel the darkness in the Force, the maelstrom of pain and death and terror that scratches at him right behind the eyes when he thinks about it.

“I didn’t exactly expect that we’d have to fly this thing out of here.” Obi-Wan looks years older than she had fifteen minutes ago. Anakin thinks that it will fade in time, as the shock wears off, but he has a sudden flash of what she’ll look like in another twenty years, when her hair goes all silver instead of just a strand here and there and a lifetime of service to the Republic takes its toll: old and weather-worn and still as strong as a mountain. Still beautiful.

Anakin is momentarily grateful that the disturbance in the Force means that she probably hadn’t picked up the stray thought, then guilty for thinking it. “Try turning the console on,” he says to cover his blush, and Obi-Wan straightens up, her fingers flying over the keys.

Anakin yelps as sparks explode in his face, then swears as he realizes that the end of his padawan braid is on fire, swatting at it. “Turn it off!”

Obi-Wan does, and Anakin drags himself out from beneath the console with a smell of burning hair. “I _can_ fix it,” he says firmly in reply to the look on her face.

“I didn’t say anything,” she protests.

“I wish Artoo was here,” he adds grumpily, leaning back against it. “We’d have this fixed in no time then.”

Obi-Wan kneels down in front of him, pulling her hair out of her face and tying it back with a band, so that it falls in a long red sweep over her shoulder. “That’s not a bad thought. I don’t know why you’re so fond of that droid in particular, but there _are_ four astromechs here – the ones that came with Kit and the others; they’ve been busy fixing the engines. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

Anakin scrubs a hand over his eyes. “I don’t know why I didn’t either. I guess I’m just not thinking straight.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth tightens. “I don’t think any of us are.” She takes her borrowed comlink off her belt, clicking it on.

Anakin listens to the sound of her voice, not the words. He knows more or less what she’s saying: asking the starfighter astromechs to come up here and fix what will take Anakin hours, if not days. “Master Windu’s dead, isn’t he?” he says when she’s finished, staring down at his hands. “The Council must have discovered that the Chancellor was lying, and they went to arrest him and he was too powerful for them.” He swipes a hand over his mouth, feeling sick.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Obi-Wan says. There isn’t much hope in her voice.

“The clones didn’t do it on their own. They don’t – they don’t think that way. And there was an order given; I heard it. I know the Chancellor’s – Palpatine’s – I know his voice.”

An approaching step makes him look up, his nerves thrumming even though he already knows who it is.

“As soon as we’re out of hyperspace we should contact Kamino,” says Kit Fisto. He looks awful, his green skin tinged with gray, as if the tragedy in the Force has leached all the color from him. “If it’s in their programming, then it goes back to the cloners. Shaak Ti’s on Kamino overseeing clone trooper training; if she’s still alive, then she’ll be able to find out where this started. I’ve never been quite sure where the clone army came from in the first place.”

“Master Sifo-Dyas commissioned its creation more than ten years ago,” Obi-Wan says, glancing up. “I have some familiarity with the subject.”

“Then he must also have commissioned that they be programmed with that order,” Fisto says. “You and I both know it’s suspicious. Sifo-Dyas just happens to commission a clone army, then dies before he can tell the Council or the Senate about it? And just as we need them the first batches are coming to full maturity? Didn’t anyone ever look into this?”

“There was an investigation, but at the time we needed the clone army too badly to look too closely into their origins.” Obi-Wan scrubs a hand over her face. “Jango Fett once told me that he’d never met Sifo-Dyas. He was commissioned by someone else, but I can’t remember who – there’s something else going on here. Something elusive. I have a feeling –”

“I have the same feeling,” Fisto says. “We’ve all been tricked. The clones, the war, Dooku – this was all a Sith trick to destroy the Jedi.”

“Dooku was a true believer,” Anakin says suddenly. “He was evil, but – he really believed in the Confederacy of Independent Systems. We thought that he was the one behind it all, but if he was just another pawn…” He lets the words trail off at the look on Obi-Wan’s face. “Master?”

“It was meant to start on Naboo,” Obi-Wan says. “That’s why Darth Maul was there. Dooku can’t have been a part of it then, he would never have ordered Qui-Gon’s death. How can we all have been so _blind_?”

“Because that’s what the Sith do,” Vos says. “They lie, even to each other. They manipulate and destroy.”

“And what do we do?” Anakin asks. “What if we’re the last Jedi left in the galaxy? What do we do then?”

Obi-Wan grips his shoulder. “We defend the galaxy. We defend the Republic. We fight until either the Sith are destroyed or we are. Even if we are the last of the Jedi, we are still Jedi. No Sith can take that from us.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Dirt in the Machine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10580343) by [bedlamsbard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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